The movie is a Zane Grey story formerly “Born to the West”, staring John Wayne. This movie had a confusing beginning for me. Heading for Wyoming Dare, played by John Wayne, and his side kick, Dink, are involved in a cattle rustling.   They pick the wrong side which is the rustlers side and they are barely able to get free.  They find out that the cattle that were being rustled belong to his cousin who is also the banker of the town and President of the Cattleman’s Association. Being the big man in town Tom Fillmore also has the best-looking girlfriend, Judith, and Dare are immediately enamored by her beauty.

Dare takes a job with his cousin Tom and begins his career as a cattleman. He starts at the bottom as a trail drive cook. He takes the job seriously but he is traveling every night into town to see Judith.  He is undercutting his cousin’s position with the girl which is taken very graciously by Tom. Dare is given the job as a trail foreman for his cousin’s cattle. The previous foreman turns out to be a cohort of the bad man in town Bart Hammond who wants Tom’s cattle in the worst way and tries to steal them. When he can’t do it one way he talks Dare into a card game and a crooked card sharp almost cleans out the money for the cattle.

Tom arrives to save the day and wins back the money. Getting shot in the process Tom is saved by Dare and the arrival of the trail crew save the day.   The story is a true western and it represents the ups and downs of the life that was always a continual trial. I recommend this movie to all western lovers.

The movie was just a vehicle to complete a number of picture deals for Alan Ladd. This did not influence my look at the movie and I am glad that I did because it was a good western. The story begins after the Civil War and when John Chandler returns home to Atlanta his wife is dead and his son and dog are missing and when his search concluded he was found in Pennsylvania. The boy is mute in an orphanage with their dog. David is played by David Ladd and he did an excellent job. John begins to search the countryside for doctors who might be able to solve his son speech problem. He gets in trouble with Union law fighting sheepherders who try and steal the boys dog.  He is going to jail but instead is placed in servitude. Linnet Moore keeps David out of harms way as Harry Burleigh the large sheepherder played by Dean Jagger and his two sons beat Chandler down and out. Getting thirty days or thirty dollars he is headed for jail but Linnet Moore, played by Olivia de Havilland, says she will pay the fine and John can work out at her farm.

The story continues and attachments grow and John finds out that the doctor’s friend in Minnesota has had success in similar cases and it would only cost three hundred dollars for the trip and surgery. The only way to get the money is to sell the boys dog that appeared to be a prize sheep-herding dog, which he had exhibited several times. So as a last resort he sells the dog.

When the boy comes back not being cured and still mute he is devastated about the dog and takes it out on his father who feels terrible and goes to get the dog back but it is now owned by The Burleigh Clan.  They want to get even and then some for being thwarted in there efforts to take over the Moore Farm by simply stealing the range. The story continues and a gunfight is the beginning of the new life for John, David and Linnet.

This was a good story with right prevailing over wrong in the typical western way. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to any western buff.

This is a Louis L’Amour story of two brothers immediately after the Civil War. Each of the two older Traven brothers fought on opposite sides but are now heading home. The oldest one Daly played by Sam Elliot, fought for the Confederacy and was caught up in two separate events that almost took his life. The first incident he was saved by a Confederate detachment that was going to continue the war after getting more arms and money by trading grain and slave in Mexico. The Second event he was saved by his brother Mac played by Tom Selleck, who was a Union officer during the War.

The Confederate rebels were ravaging the countryside becoming killers, thieves and kidnappers. The rebels took the sisters of Mac and Dal and Dal’s sweetheart Kate played by Katherine Ross. The plan was to sell the women to brothels in Mexico and the men into slave labor in the Mexican silver mines. With this money the rebels could buy more guns and bullets.

The Traven brothers were determined to end the war in this part of Texas and they set out to free the hostages by destroying the Mexican connection and the rebels that felt they needed to push the war on.

I definitely enjoyed this movie even as it was very simplistic but it had all of the parts of a good western movie actors, scenery, and story. I would recommend this movie to any western movie fan.

This is a western short story in a trio of stories from the book Rainbow Rider by Wayne D. Overholster. This story is about a gunman who is working for a large land company working out of northern New Mexico and it moves to press claims for land into southern Colorado. The main character is Rick Marvin who is having some conflicts with his conscience about railroading honest hard working people off the land that they had before the Grant Company came along.

He meets a woman on the wrong side that is against the Grant Company and it is the final straw that drives him into a headlong fight against the Company. This pits him against the company and his old partner Pete Fargo who only goes where the money is and until now the winning side.

This is a good western story with not too many side turns and is a very easy read. I will recommend this story as a different pace for the western reader.

I classified this movie as a western. The story began in Ireland and ended up on the rolling plains of Oklahoma. This is a love story with a truly American twist in that the lowly commoner wins the love of the gentry of the old country. Joseph Donnelly played by Tom Cruise holds his father as he dies after explaining, that a man is nothing with out land. The land is a man’s soul. Shannon Christie played by Nicole Kidman shows Joseph a flier from America about free land and tells him she is running away to America to get some of the free land. She has her mother’s silver spoons and that will get her to Oklahoma and the free land.

With many twists and turns the two opposite people cross the Atlantic with Joseph as Shannon’s servant. Arriving in Boston the two young people start to separate but are thrown together by a cruel act of fate. They become close and depend upon each other as Shannon gets a taste of being poor and looking for every meal. Things continue to happen and some bad events happen and they are separated.

The story continues and Joseph awakens to his dream and ends up in Oklahoma where he meets Shannon again. I wont spoil the ending for you but it is a great story with epic vistas and real American history in it. I rate it as a movie to see and it is close to my top 100 best western movies.

This western story is written by Johnny D. Boggs who has won a spur award for one of his western stories. This story was interesting but I had a hard time getting involved while reading it. The style that it was written, made it hard to get into the flow of the story. The author wrote it as a diary of a boy covering a long period of time.

I definitely disagree with the dust jacket review of the story. The dust cover said it was about how a stage stop got its name. In my observation after reading the book it presented its self to me as a boys growth to maturity during a hard time in western history. The time was just prior to and during the Civil War involving a family, where the mother had died and the oldest son had gone to West Point. The oldest son graduates and become a Dragoon part of the Army protecting the travelers of the west. The complications of the beginning of the Civil War hits this family of strong minded men hard.  The impact was so complete that it threw them apart. Father against son and brother against brother which was a common happening during this time frame.

The story to me would have been more engaging and a better read for me if the style had been different. I would recommend this book to western readers who would like to view a different style of story telling. I am trying to evaluate all styles of writing as I progress on proof reading the story I wrote in the month of November.

This western story written by Les Savage Jr. was written in the late fifties and was at the time considered to far from the accepted model of western books. The Author died and his agent felt that it should not be published in the form I read it in. The agent supplied a rough draft to another author and he wrote a story that fit the stereotype western of the day called Gun Shy.

This original work breaks many rules of westerns and plows new ground through the western novel world. Today’s readers are subjected to many new and different story lines with the hero’s being from any age group, race or gender. The story begins with the murder seen by a boy who did not like guns or killing anything. He sees his father killed and his mother shot and she eventually die’s of a broken heart. The story is wound around a robbery that his uncle is spending time in prison for. Gordon’s father knows his brother is innocent but is struggling to find enough evidence to free him and that is what gets him killed and the story takes off on a run down hill. There are many twists and turns as the story shows new events and introduces more characters and possible guilty people.

I really enjoyed this story and I recommend it to the western reader who likes to branch out away from the cookie cutter mold of a lot of westerns.

This western story is written by Johnny D. Boggs a spur award – winning author. The story is set in the New Mexico Territory beginning in the fourteenth year of young Caleb Hart. He would be sent by his parents over twelve hundred miles to work for his uncle, Captain Frank Hart, on his ranch. The ranch was just about the biggest one in the Territory at the time.

Caleb Hart tells the story after thirty plus years had passed. He describes himself in the present and compares himself to how he was then. Looking at himself he is ashamed that he knew so little and called himself a green pea. His father and uncle were cowboys who rode and worked together. Caleb’s father got physically broken up and he had to leave the cowboy life because of broken bones and arthritis that completely took over his body. He assaulted Caleb with the stories of his past but Caleb took them as just yarns of a broken man with little or no truth in them.

The story is compelling and has many points of suspense which draws the reader into the intricacies of the situations created by the writer. If the reader is imbedded in western history the names and places ring the bells of famous people and places. The complexities of the simple western life give a reader the feeling that as time passes and we think we are so sophisticated yet we see and observe that the complexities of life really do not change very much as we push on into modern times.

This is an interesting western story with the constant Theme’s of western life. I would recommend the book as a western with strong values and the growth of a boy into a man. I enjoyed the book and it was a quick read.

This western by spur award winning author Wayne D. Overholser tells a story of the lives of two men who were put together through strange happenings but then fell apart with the search for there own dreams. This story highlights the thought that we sometimes do not really want what we are vigorously chasing. The story rings true to today’s world happenings in that if you do not sit back and view your own dreams with an eye of objectivity you may find yourself running down a path that gets your dreams but looses your life long humanity.

This story begins with the saving of a gunfighter’s life and ends with the death of a father saving his unrecognized son. The twists and turns in the story keeps a reader involved and pushes and pulls him threw the eighteen years the two men spent in close proximity.

I definitely enjoyed the book and the writer had me threw out the story. This western is an age-old situation where one man continues to grow but his friend is locked into a dream the will cause him to loose everything that he really did want. I recommend this book to all of you western readers.

This story written by Frederic Bean is a western tale about a cowboy who is down on his luck as he pushes through to El Paso. Dan Willis has heard that there are high-paying cowboy job in the New Mexico Territory. Arriving in Texas he is broke and near starvation. Talking to his horse he vows to take any job that he can find.

The job he finds is digging postholes for a corral on Jake Logan’s ranch. This ranch has many secrets and the possibility of even illegal happenings. Not wanting to be even close to any illegal activity Dan is considering leaving before payday. He then meets Jane Logan and is swayed into staying and helping her in the process. She wants to escape from Jake and the ranch activities.

The story twists and turns around the many things that happen to Dan. He is confronted with the knowledge that illegal thing are really happening on the ranch and he could be involved. Saving the woman will not be an easy task for a thin, hard worked, cowhand but he is going to try. His idea of doing things that are right over power the need to protect himself.

This is a good western story that pits good against evil. The characters are not complex and you do not need a legend to see where things are going. I enjoyed the story and recommend it to western reading fans. More stories about the west introduce me to the many ways similar stories can be told to achieve the good result of reader enjoyment. I feel that a true western reader will enjoy this story.