Last of the Plainsmen, The

by Zane Grey

Book Overview

Buffalo Jones goes on his final mission in this rousing, classic western. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553285467
• Release Date: June 1990
• Publisher: Domain
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Buffalo Bill, Watch Out

When Zane Grey met Buffalo Jones in New York City in 1908 Zane Grey instinctively knew he had met someone special. And the two men remained friends until Jones' death many years later. This book recounts only a small portion of the plainsman's life, but what is provided relates to us the life of an adventurer, an empire builder, and a conservationist. Included are stories of the man's trying to rope lions in the Grand Canyon and to his attempt to preserve the last of the buffalo from extinction, after once having slaughtered them to provide meat for the railroad workers. When this book was first published it did not receive very good reviews, but has since been praised for Zane Grey's prose and narrative skills. Furthermore, the people Zane Grey met on this trip with Jones led directly to his creation of such great novels as Heritage of the Desert and Riders of the Purple Sage and set the stage for his entire career. Without this trip and the writing of this book there might not have been a Zane Grey as we know him today. It all began here.

Mountain Lions in Arizona, c.1908

This book is an outstanding true account of a trip made by Zane Grey and a plainsman, Buffalo Jones - one of the last. Jones was a famous sportsmen in North America at the turn of the 20th century and Grey a famous author of adventure stories. Unlike many of Grey's fictional novels of the old west, this is an account of a trip made to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon about 1908, for the purpose of tracking and capturing mountain lions. In those days, the North Rim was famous for the number and size of cougars - one mentioned in the book was 10' long, tip of tail to nape of neck, and weighed 300 pounds. The story is riveting with many details of the Arizona high desert and Grand Canyon areas of that era and gives a wonderful account of the Ponderosa Pine forest now known as the Kaibab National Forest. The details given about the behavior of the mountain lion are well worth finding a copy of this classic work. Grey includes a chapter (XV) entitled "Jones on Cougars", in which he relates the wisdom of this plainsman on the species - gained through a long life in the wilderness including a sojourn as a game warden in the Yellowstone National Park, where he captured numerous cougars alive and killed seventy-two. Although modern views of the mountain lion seem to consider this animal more like an oversized, undomesticated sort of house cat, after reading this book you will definitely treat them with appropriate dignity and caution.