Mackey Hedges, Last Buckaroo

I posted a review of this book over a year ago when I was still a new blogger and before anybody knew I was here. Among many books about the day-to-day life of working cowboys, it's among the best. Out of print for many years, it's now back in print and, for all those reasons, worth a reprise:

Last Buckaroo purports to be a novel, with something of a story to follow. But once you get past the fairly far-fetched antics at the beginning, you're treated to an informative description of what it's like moving from one ranch job to the next -- each time getting used to a new boss, a new bunch of cowboys and horses, and the conditions of various kinds of ranch operations and cow camps in various seasons of the year.

There are a few digressions, as Tap the narrator in his sixties recalls adventures from earlier times. Mostly it's the absorbing accounts of working cowboys who seem completely real, like they could walk right off the page. The novel is set in the Great Basin of the West, so the lingo, the gear and the cowboy way are all buckaroo-style, harking back to the vaqueros from old California. The terrain is mostly Nevada and Oregon.

In northern California the two heroes take jobs packing dudes into the mountains. Later they settle down for a while working in a huge feedlot operation. There's also a side trip to Arizona, where our boys fetch up with an outfit of Apache cowboys, and the author explores in fascinating detail the uneasy relationship between white cowboys and their Native American counterparts.

It's also a story of friendship, as old-timer Tap acquires a young, greenhorn sidekick, Dean, who knows kickboxing but not much about what it takes to be a cowboy. Over the seasons and years, the boy learns a great deal, giving the reader a chance to learn some things along with him. Hedges captures the romance of cowboying without denying the discomforts, the dangers and risk of accident and injury, and the potential for conflict between men who don't get along. The novel is punctuated with several violent fights, and there are two or three accounts of accidents sending cowboys to hospital emergency rooms.

This book was a great pleasure to read. It's currently available at amazon.

Coming up: John Neihardt, Lonesome Trail (1907)