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Grey, Zane, 1872-1939

"Heritage of the Desert"

That's his religion.
He's felt that way over all the strangers who ever came out here. But
he'd be the same to them without his hopes. I don't know the secret of
his kindness, but I think he loves everybody and everything. And Jack,
he's so good. I owe him all my life. He would not let the Navajos take
me; he raised me, kept me, taught me. I can't break my promise to him.
He's been a father to me, and I love him."
"I think I love him, too," replied Hare, simply.
With an effort he left her at last and mounted the grassy slope and
climbed high up among the tottering yellow crags; and there he battled
with himself. Whatever the charm of Mescal's surrender, and the
insistence of his love, stern hammer-strokes of fairness, duty, honor,
beat into his brain his debt to the man who had saved him. It was a
long-drawn-out battle not to be won merely by saying right was right.
He loved Mescal, she loved him; and something born in him with his new
health, with the breath of this sage and juniper forest, with the sight
of purple canyons and silent beckoning desert, made him fiercely
tenacious of all that life had come to mean for him.


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