Books: *North of 36

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*North of 36

On Texas Plains Mr. Hough's Fillain Is Flayed Alive

The Story. Eighteen sixty-seven. Texas—immense, unorganized, full of cattle for which no profitable market could be found, cattle-rustlers, land-poor cow-barons and original sin. The Del Sol ranch—sole owner, Anastasie ("Taisie") Lockhart, redhaired, beautiful, 20-year-old orphan —her father, Burleson Lockhart, had been murdered some years previously. Broke like the rest of Texas, Taisie was at her wits' end. Her cow hands were faithful, but she couldn't carry on forever with no money to pay them. Enter the mysterious Dan McMasters, sheriff of Gonzales, son of Burleson Lockhart's best friend and a two-gunman. He brings news of a market "north of 36" —the railroad has come to Abilene— the East is crying for cattle. Wealth lies waiting for any Texan who dares drive a herd some fifteen hundred miles through a country practically unmapped—savage as a rattlesnake. "Let's go!" said Taisie Lockhart.

The rest of the story is devoted to that wild adventure, the trek of Del Sol—cattle, men, horses, rifles, six-shooters, across uncharted plains to Abilene, on the trail of the North Star, The difficulties include Indians, stampedes, storms, the fording of rivers believed impossible to ford and, throughout, the complications of an ingeniously villainous plot. A trunk full of land-scrip proves a bone of contention and Taisie's own attractions very nearly wreck things at various times—for far too many people are anxious to marry her. The actions of McMasters often seem very strange—can it be that he is a traitor and in league with her enemies? Of course he isn't a traitor—and of course, in the end, he marries Taisie—the expedition is successful—the villain punished in an appropriately ghastly manner—in fact he is flayed alive— and Taisie and Dan, one conjectures, settle down to raising the finest cattle and red-haired children in Texas.

The Significance. Few average readers will be able to summon up any sort of a yawn over North of 36, It has the usual appurtenances of "Western" fiction—but it has something more. The man who wrote it knew the country and people he wrote about as most "Western" writers do not;—conscientiousness, craftmanship and sincerity are evident throughout the novel. What faults there are are faults neither of intention nor laziness—you have the constant feeling that here is a book written as well as the particular author concerned could write it.

The Critics. The New York Herald: "Mr. Hough's wild West is unmitigatedly the real outdoors; its wildness is that of nature rather than of the stage or the film."

Public Ledger (Philadelphia): "An epic of the border. ... It is the sort of 'history' that men will read."

The New York Times: "It is chiefly in the spirit of romance that this tale of the northward trek of the cattle herds of the Southwest is written."