About the age of 12, I discovered the author, Zane Gray, whose western books covered several feet of shelf space in the library near my home. Long before Louis Lamour captured the hearts of western-lovers, Zane Gray was thrilling people with sagas such as The Riders of the Purple Sage and Thirty Thousand on Hoof. Gray was an author who had a pretty good grasp of human nature and wrote about that age-old battle of good and evil. The plots were all rather predictable--heroes and villains and a pretty girl who eventually was rescued by the handsome young hero who captured her heart before riding off into the western sunset.