Cow-Country

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels and fictional short stories about the Old West. She wrote 57 western novels some of which became movies. Ways in the west were changing just as a man changes as he grows old. The change can be fast or slow, but no matter what the change must come. Bower writes historical reminiscences of pioneers among the sage and bush, clearing the way for a new America. This story beings, "In hot mid-afternoon when the acrid, gray dust cloud kicked up by the listless plodding of eight thousand cloven hoofs formed the only blot on the hard blue above the Staked Plains, an ox stumbled and fell awkwardly under his yoke, and refused to scramble up when his driver shouted and prodded him with the end of a willow gad. "Call your master, Ezra," directed a quiet woman voice gone weary and toneless with the heat, and two restless children. "Don't beat the poor brute. He can't go any farther and carry the yoke, much less pull the wagon."