Historically, most cattlemen use whips to drive their stock. Tonyan's book has much of the same kind of action as a Western, but with a Southeastern flavor. Instead of sagebrush, landscapes are dotted with palmetto scrub and sabal palms. Instead of coyotes howling in the night, alligators bellow. But there still are the gunfights on cow town streets.
Outlaws still ambush cattle drives.
Lone horsemen still ride trails and hire out their gunslinging abilities. Florida's history leads itself to that kind of treatment. Cattle drives and range wars are as much a part of the state's heritage as real estate development and drug dealing. Take, for example open range laws. Those laws allowed cattle and other livestock to roam free over unfenced land.