One way I have prepared myself to write fiction about cowboys and cowboy life has been to read background material. In the history of Wyoming in this area, just about everyone will read Asa Shinn Mercer’s The Banditti of the Plains. Or The Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. (The Crowning Infamy of the Ages), which is about the invasion of Johnson County, also called the Johnson County War. Mercer’s version has been much disliked by many people (such as stockgrowers), but it was written at the time, and it is standard reading. A more researched treatment of the same topic is Helen Hunt Jackson’s The War on Powder River (1966), and a more recent treatment with a somewhat different angle is John W. Davis’s Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County (2010). All of these have added to my understanding of that episode in history, but I cannot say that I have arrived at a definitive version. That is the nature of research; one continues to read and to compare versions. Another angle on cowboy life in Wyoming of the late 1800’s is available through autobiographical works. Of the many I have read, I have read a couple of these a couple of times, and they offer a wealth of detail from cowboy life and work as well as many examples of language use, which is good for a writer. One of these books is Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884-1889, by Reuben B. Mullins, who worked as a cowboy in my part of Wyoming. A good companion to Mullins’s work is Pony Trails in Wyoming, by John K. Rollinson, who also lived and worked in my part of Wyoming (and may have ridden across what is now my horse pasture) a little while after Mullins. Rollinson’s account covers more experience and presents more detail, and it also presents a little more insight into human nature. A couple of books about cowboy life but not about Wyoming in particular are also worth mention here. Philip Ashton Rollins’s The Cowboy: An Unconventional History of Civilization on the Old-Time Cattle Range is a good standard source for cowboy life of the nineteenth century, and he has a good chapter on the cowboy mentality of the time, which a person may compare to life today. Another good book is Charles Siringo’s A Cowboy Detective: A True Story of Twenty-Two Years with a World-Famous Detective Agency, which tells stories about this famous detective and adds insight into conflicts and intrigues in the working world. This is just one aspect of doing research, and I mention only a few of many books I have read on the subject. This kind of research can be balanced by first-hand experience on and observation of cattle ranches, by getting to know people who have been working cowboys for a living, and by saddling and riding one’s horse. For me, the defining element of the western novel is the horse, not the gun, and so I have been much more interested in learning about and writing about cowboys than about gunfighters and outlaws. Perhaps I should add that I grew up in a ranching heritage, and although my father went broke when I was very young, I wore his Stetson at an early age and recovered some of that heritage by living on my own land in Wyoming and by having a horse that I can go out and saddle. Blurb—review excerpt (front cover copy) “One-Eyed Cowboy Wild is a refreshing version of the stories that first set the Western before its audience. [It] is a Western in the form of classics like The Virginian. . . . Prepare yourself to experience the Western the way it was before gratuitous violence was the American way of entertainment.” --Springdale, AR, News Blurb—back cover copy When Zeke Hill returns home, his brother Gene is glad to see him—despite some troubling changes. As Zeke’s true character comes out, Gene realizes that his brother doesn’t have a strong set of moral values. When Zeke resumes a deadly feud with Charlie Bickford, and then Charlie’s brother, Chet, Gene has no choice but to stick by his own brother. But at what cost? Danger stalks the Hill brothers, and Gene’s budding relationship with a pretty young ranch girl, Katharine Rose, is at stake. Blood’s thicker than water…but trouble is here to stay. Excerpt- Gene Hill would always remember the day his brother Zeke came home from Texas. It was late May on the Wyoming plains—that young and green and hopeful time of year, with the promise of warmer weather in the air. Gene felt the sun on his back and the cool breeze on his neck. He was tamping in the corner post when Zeke came riding across the open pasture on his buckskin gelding, wearing a rippling red shirt and a high-crowned white hat. Zeke stood in the stirrups, pushed himself up to stand on the saddle, and waved his hat to his brother. The breeze ruffled the full head of black hair as the rider swayed, easy and carefree, on the prancing horse. Zeke put his hat back onto his head, slid down into the saddle, and kicked the horse into a lope, riding straight at his brother in a drumming gallop. He stopped the horse with its haunches bunching under it, so close that the horse's slobber flicked on Gene's shovel handle. Zeke vaulted off the horse as it stopped, the same old Zeke as always, gliding out of the saddle with both feet clear of the stirrups, pushing himself away from the saddle horn, and landing in a perfect walk. He flipped the knotted reins up and over the horse's head to trail on the ground so that Bucky, with a hackamore across his nose but no bit in his mouth, went to cropping grass. Buy Links- https://www.amazon.com/One-Eyed-Cowboy-Wild-John-Nesbitt/dp/1530457777/ref=sr_1_4?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.YKEa17K90VIcEb4LzxhiUTUhgcN6DLNmVOLivGwnaTAO_5syzESfQE0NEISEJSSnNSplNKB30uFZRb4g9MJGQKpYGnb4WIyC1TRAeXry64CqdhwVNZSgNU64vZVTUYl1QWMP8yEUF545LUrWWW_xfYFvNgIEsRkHGkwyqCUKcixkZDI7SOvQauRMn6u5Xi247Y-YrCdq5kkQEUdnDFEtf-NIBAth2Wu8RANlvJ8xy5w.a9QtJW-lUK05QgqC2LXwxq4jN0ZbXxmrdi5VaGwAfII&dib_tag=se&qid=1710295632&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+D.+Nesbitt&s=books&sr=1-4&text=John+D.+Nesbitt https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-eyed-cowboy-wild-john-d-nesbitt/1000129398?ean=9781530457779 About the Author-
John D. Nesbitt is the author of more than fifty books, including traditional westerns, crossover western mysteries, contemporary western fiction, retro/noir fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award four times—twice for paperback novel, once for short story, and once for poem. He has won the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award twice—once for novel and once for short story. He has been a finalist for the Spur Award twice, the Peacemaker seven times, and the Will Rogers Medallion Award eight times. He has also received two creative writing fellowships with the Wyoming Arts Council—once for fiction, once for nonfiction–and he has won the fiction award four times with the Wyoming State Historical Society. Recent works include Summer’s Lease and Diamonds and Doom, frontier novels with Thorndike. Visit his website at www.johndnesbitt.com 7/26/2024 08:20:06 pm
John, thank you for being a guest honoring the 2024 National Day of the Cowboy. It's a pleasure to have you on my blog. Comments are closed.
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