The Cattlemen-#7

By: Pronzini, Bill

Book Overview

The Cattlemen-#7 (Mass Market Paperback) by Bill Pronzini (Author) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449131459
• ISBN13: 9780449131459
• Release Date: November 1986
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Ranchers big and small

In this seventh volume of the Best of the West anthology series, editors Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg offer a selection of fiction by such noted names in the Western field as Owen Wister, Thomas Thompson, Norman A. Fox, Charles Alden Seltzer, Elmore Leonard, T. V. Olsen, and Steve Frazee. The pieces they choose range from action-packed to humorous to bittersweet, including "At the Sign of the Last Chance" (a gathering of old-time cowmen c. 1910 looks back on their days of glory), "Love's International" (a rancher and his top hand conspire to show his niece that a "simon-pure, dyed-in-the-wool, thirty-seven-carat American cowpuncher" is superior in all ways to "a money-grubbin' member of the British nobility"), "The Seventh Desert" (a pair of newlyweds struggles to establish a small ranch in Arizona, opposed by Indians and a local baron who's more than half rustler), "They Walked Tall" (after standing off the local Big Man for years, a small rancher discovers that he isn't much better), "The Rancher's Lady" (a widower finds out that his mail-order bride may not have been telling him everything), "The Big Die-Up" (an unprecedented winter threatens to destroy the entire range unless one prudent cowman is willing to share his stock of hay), "The Day the Earth Burned" (determined to find her husband's killer, a rancher's widow refuses passage across her land to a clutch of neighbors threatened by a grass fire), and "The Longhorn Legion" (returning to his boyhood home with a herd of cattle and dreams of revenge against the man he blames for his father's death, Tod Kirby discovers some strange truths). As in all these anthologies, the stories are expertly written and offer plenty of unforgettable prose as well as interesting characters and well-crafted plots. These ranchers range from the land baron to the shirttail version, but they all have courage and pride. Another excellent entry.