COWHAND

"The story of a working cowboy" as told by a West Texas cowhand, Fat Alford, disposes of legendary misconceptions but has the robust realities of a home on the range and a life in the saddle. For drouth, and later the depression, made this life precarious rather than dangerous and were the only enemies he had to lick from the time when at fourteen, a shirttail kid who didn't want to pick cotton, he went out on his own. He fell asleep in the saddle- and out of it- on his first job- and stampeded the herd; he quickly learned to cure an itching rope hand; he stalked a ghost in a canyon- and came face to face with a calf; and the glamour of horse-breaking and brone-stomping, remudas and rodeos was balanced off by an itinerant life which was often short on food as well as cash, which reduced him to sheep tending and fence building in the slack seasons, while the depression opened up the possibilities of fur catching for a living and deer and hog for a meal..... In the natural vernacular, this sustains the indigenous experiences and some of the sporting excitement of a life such as this- and has its appeal for the market Frank Dobie has firmly established, man and boy.