Across The Cheyenne River
Russ Archer, raised as an orphan, longs for the security that a piece of land and marriage could bring. In frontier Wyoming, he meets a lonely young woman, Kate Doolin, who’s working in a store while she looks for her long-lost father. Russ discovers that a big piece of land across the Cheyenne River is about to open up for homesteading, but, meanwhile, he hires on at a brand-new ranch run by a mysterious, worried man named Lidge Mercer. Nesbitt is in no hurry to tell his story, and, as in many of his novels, the true appeal lies both in his minute appreciation of ordinary work and, even more, in the deadpan, laconic, almost mournful exchanges between unschooled men, whose few pleasures revolve around storytelling and the occasional visit to a prostitute. But out of Nesbitt’s seeming inattention a dangerous mystery arises, threatening Russ and Kate and Mercer’s ranch. Russ must prove he’s a good hand not just with horses and fence posts but also with guns. A quiet western that builds to a white-hot, satisfying finish. --John Mort