When I Came West, by Laurie Wagner Buyer, $14.95. Poet and novelist Laurie Wagner Buyer is known as a strong lady, a woman who writes about the joys and hardships of ranching and wilderness life from a personal point of view. But that toughness didn’t come naturally.
Buyer dropped out of college in Illinois to live with Bill, a Montana mountain man she had corresponded with but never met. Bill’s letters made Buyer fall in love with him, but the man himself wasn’t even likable. A self-centered misfit, he took it upon himself to teach Buyer survival skills.
So she learned to ride a horse and often rode miles by herself through snow to get the mail. He taught her to trap and to can the meat, as well as tan the skins using the animals’ brains. Such knowledge was needed for self-sufficiency. But was it necessary to limit toilet paper to a few squares a week? Or to find dead mice on top of the soap — Bill’s trick to counter her fear of rodents?
In a series of essays, Buyer tells the story of nearly a decade of living with Bill. Her writing is superb, her tales richly detailed. They show a flawed man, but they also reveal a strong woman determined to live a life she has chosen for herself, a woman who matures through hardship and by facing challenges.
To Hell on a Fast Horse, by Mark Lee Gardner, $26.99.
It’s a mystery why Billy the Kid is such a beloved Western figure. He was a punk, an outlaw murdering in cold blood. But we love him, and we are suspicious of the sheriff who brought him to justice.
Mark Lee Gardner’s “To Hell on a Fast Horse” is a fine story about the Kid and his nemesis, Sheriff Pat Garrett. It’s as absorbing as a novel.
Bill McCarty (Billy Bonney or Billy Antrim or “Billito,” take your pick) was born in New York City but raised in the West. A petty criminal, he hit the big time as a participant in New Mexico’s Lincoln County War. Unlike the psychopaths who passed for Western outlaws, Billy was a likable youth with many friends who were happy to protect him from the law. In the end, that did him no good, and Garrett gunned down the outlaw.
Gardner provides new information and turns up one intriguing bit about Wayne Brazel, the man acquitted of killing Garrett in 1908. Gardner contends that Brazel headed to South America, where he was shot dead by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Follow the Sun: Robert Lougheed, by Don Hedgpeth, $65.
Robert Lougheed is a stalwart of Western art. His paintings of cowboys, horses and ranch life are treasured for their vibrancy and accuracy.
Born in 1910, Lougheed was a Canadian who supported himself for years as an illustrator. (He also designed Mobil Oil’s flying red horse.) Eventually, he branched into fine art. That, along with his mentoring of many young Western artists, is his legacy.
“Follow the Sun” is an uncritical biography of Lougheed, but it is primarily a collection of his paintings (many of them cropped), some 334 of them in color, painted from life, that show Lougheed’s contributions.
