The Dude Wrangler

Wallie Macpherson is a pampered young Easterner who summers at a fashionable Atlantic City hotel, winters in Florida, and lets his aunt settle every bill. Stung by a quarrel over his idleness, he heads west to file on 160 acres of Wyoming rangeland and make something of himself. His claim sits squarely inside a big cattleman’s range, so the greenhorn “dude” must learn to handle horses, cows, and hostile neighbors while the frontier openly laughs at his ignorance. Caroline Lockhart, who edited the Cody Enterprise and helped found the Cody Stampede, wrote from close knowledge of ranch life, and her comedy never hardens into cruelty. The result is a warm, funny story about a soft man toughening into a settler, with a sharp-tongued Wyoming woman, Helene Spenceley, keeping score.