Mavericks Author:Jack Schaefer Old Jake Hanlon sits still and quiet as a wrinkled lizard on a sun warmed stone. He is ancient and craglike, something like the worn, rocky buttes lying out there beyond him. — Jake sits on the edge of the mesa gazing out over the enormous expanse of plain. He does not see the dual lane highway snaking its way between the tall buttes. What Jake s... more »ees is a cloud of clean, sweet dust rising from the past--dust raised by thousands of hoofs. There they come--the mustangs, the broncos, the broom-tails--the wild horses with the look of eagles in their eyes.
As Jake sits, his life appears before him, a life that paralleled the era of the wild horses. Jake sees himself as a boy and as a young man, who was proud of his record in the taking of mustangs but found himself glad when one particular stallion eluded capture. Jake recollects the 530 mile race he ran when his horse, Jimmy Dunn, beat all comers. It was the horse that won, not Jake.
Then, suddenly it is the past no longer. The present demands a final effort from old Jake. There is a boy lost out there in the wilderness. A boy who needs the kind of help only an old man tough as leather and wise in the way of horses can give.
Past and present meld, and old Jake finds his destiny along with that magnificent herd of mustangs--no longer suited to this life, but secure forever in their place in history. But Jack Schaefer's powerful writing convinces every reader that the disappearance of a breed--both man and horse--is a loss hard to sustain.« less