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Originally Published in 1921

Now in the Public Domain

Foreword

It was inevitable that in reat West I should at length co I have steered clear of this rock But at last I have reached it andevents of pioneer days

Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the re the lives of people still affected by a fighting past How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those ti labors have been devoted tostories resemble the times they depict I have loved the West for its vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great

In this e of realism, it seems there is no place for writers of romance, no place for ro up to the great ere realistic, and the war itself was horribly realistic, and the aftermath is likewise Romance is only another name for idealis Never in the history of the world were ideals needed so terribly as now Walter Scott wrote ro, Hawthorne, Stevenson

It was Stevenson, particularly, ielded a bludgeon against the realists People live for the dream in their hearts And I have yet to know anyone who has not some secret dream, some hope, however dim, some storied wall to look at in the dusk, soe indeed to find that the realists have ideals and dreanificant But they love, they hope, they dreale on with that dream in their hearts just the same as others We all are drea of ti of life that makes us work on

It was Wordsworth rote, "The world is too ive the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a feords it would be contained in that quotation My inspiration to write has always come fro In all that I have done I have tried toand spending they lay waste their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the open!