Customer Reviews

Hangman's Range (Atlantic Large Print Books)

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Dean Bowden just wanted to get his cattle pushed north from Texas to Montana and to recover mentally, spiritually, and emotionally but he stumbles into a town taken over by Len Carberry, who was running cattle on Bowden range, and who had hired his own crooked sheriff to keep the peace and help him to line his pockets. Unlike several other westerns I've read where the townspeople are mere sheep to be herded by the bad guys, these merchants and citizens have formed their own shadow justice system. Without apology they are night riders and dispensers of justice by hangman's rope and slowly they are getting rid of the rotten of the earth. Bowden, who wants only to be left alone to ranch, finds himself in the middle of it all when Carberry's cattle encroach on one side and Marcie Gray's on the other. Where Bowden's character is salt-of-the-earth, Marcie's character is never fully formed. She remains an immature, spoiled girl who cannot decide her direction and remains what I call "timidly aggressive". In the end justice does come when the vigilantes have killed or run off the worst of the lot and Bowden takes out Carberry after dispensing his hired gun. Then, masterfully, Bowden takes out Marcie and we can hear the wedding bells ringing above the gunfire, creaking leather, and jingling spurs.