The spell of the desert comes back to me, as it always will come. I see the veils, like purple smoke, in the canyon, and I feel the silence. And it seems that again I must try to pierce both and to get at the strange wild life of the last American wilderness-wild still, almost, as it ever was.While this romance is an independent story, yet readers of "Riders of the Purple Sage" will find in it an answer to a question often asked.I wish to say also this story has appeared serially in a different form in one of the monthly magazines under the title of "The Desert Crucible." ZANE GREY.The spell of the desert comes back to me, as it always will come. I see the veils, like purple smoke, in the canyon, and I feel the silence. And it seems that again I must try to pierce both and to get at the strange wild life of the last American wilderness-wild still, almost, as it ever was.While this romance is an independent story, yet readers of "Riders of the Purple Sage" will find in it an answer to a question often asked.I wish to say also this story has appeared serially in a different form in one of the monthly magazines under the title of "The Desert Crucible." ZANE GREY.