Cullen Baker returns home to Texas after the Civil War ended. He didn't really participate in the war, but everyone assumes he did. The people who hated him when he was a kid living there still hate him. Seems like the only people who don't want to punch or shoot him are outlaws... and Katy Thorne. Katy is from one of the best families in the area, but even her friendship can't save him from greedy carpetbaggers and a variety of other creeps. Cullen just wants to farm the land he already owns, but everyone keeps blaming him for all sorts of crimes he didn't commit, just because he makes a handy scapegoat. Eventually, Cullen takes after the people who hate him, and the sparks fly fast and furious.
I know this is an earlier L'Amour book, so I'll cut the too-fast ending some slack. It's a fun read, and I liked Cullen and Katy a lot.
Particularly Good Bits:
A really rough man never has to prove anything to anybody, he knows what he can do and he doesn't care even a mite whether anybody else knows it or not. With a youngster it's otherwise. He figures he's got to show everybody how tough he is or nobody will believe it, so he winds up in plenty of grief (p. 9).
One thing I'd learned was it mattered mighty little how much money a man had as long as he was contented (p. 13).
For a man to be a peace with himself was important, Will said, not what people say. People are often wrong, and public opinion can change, and the hatreds of people are rarely reasonable things. I can hear him yet. He used to say there was no use a man wearing himself out with hatred an dill-feeling, and time proved it out (p. 13).
A few men riding into the street meant nothing to anybody, not those days. There were loose men from everywhere, just drifting, hunting they knew not what, men who had lost what they had i the war and were hoping, away back inside their skulls, to find it somewhere else (p 53).
To have friends a man has to be friendly, and to get others to think of you, you have to think of others (p. 145).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence and threats made to a woman. Some cussing, obviously a good bit of western violence, but no smut.
