I read the first eleven chapters on the bus crossing LA from Sawtelle to East LA and found it to be fairly engaging. Two twenty-somethings that each own a prosperous ranch in Montana choose to ride around the country, in this case Four Corners in the Southwest in the latter part of the 19th C., like skilled cowboys with wanderlust who move from ranch to ranch rather than settling down with a wife and kids, which may be too much for some readers to swallow.
They are blood brothers, one being half Cheyenne, and display an easy-going turn of the 21st C. 'brothers' manner, but are bushwacked along the trail while minding their own business. They beat off the bad guys (we readers find they are selling rifles to someone and want no witnesses), and are taken in by a Navajo band. While the wounded guy is being nursed back to health, his pard goes to track down the bushwackers and through his trail craft is able to avoid being killed while sleeping near a small creek. At this point the reader wonders whether the Navajo band is buying rifles and only pretending to be square with the protagonists (the story is told from both of their thoughts, words, and deeds).
Meanwhile, back at the hogan, the wounded guy turns down the attempted seduction by the beautiful schoolmarm who is in the camp to teach English to the Navajo (actually they used to work in pairs, the New England do-gooders who came to show the Indian a better way). I predict that a circuit riding parson will soon turn up and cool her jets.
In some places the author explains what the reader should be made to infer or raises the possibility that the wounded pard may die in the first few chapters of the book.
But it is a pleasant read, and may become a series. The author is deceased and his literary estate is being managed to keep pumping out the westerns.
They are blood brothers, one being half Cheyenne, and display an easy-going turn of the 21st C. 'brothers' manner, but are bushwacked along the trail while minding their own business. They beat off the bad guys (we readers find they are selling rifles to someone and want no witnesses), and are taken in by a Navajo band. While the wounded guy is being nursed back to health, his pard goes to track down the bushwackers and through his trail craft is able to avoid being killed while sleeping near a small creek. At this point the reader wonders whether the Navajo band is buying rifles and only pretending to be square with the protagonists (the story is told from both of their thoughts, words, and deeds).
Meanwhile, back at the hogan, the wounded guy turns down the attempted seduction by the beautiful schoolmarm who is in the camp to teach English to the Navajo (actually they used to work in pairs, the New England do-gooders who came to show the Indian a better way). I predict that a circuit riding parson will soon turn up and cool her jets.
In some places the author explains what the reader should be made to infer or raises the possibility that the wounded pard may die in the first few chapters of the book.
But it is a pleasant read, and may become a series. The author is deceased and his literary estate is being managed to keep pumping out the westerns.
