It is now 1910 and Hewey Calloway is old enough and smart enough to know that his freewheeling cowboy life is coming to an end, that the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are creeping in even to remote Alpine, where he works for Morgan Jenkins's J Bar outfit. He has never sought or wanted responsibility. He is wary of having to look after his nephew Tommy, a boy intent on following the cowboy life. Hewey even turns down an opportunity to become...

"Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country. The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits--75 cents--a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching...