Summary
Rust-streaked barbed wire slices across the parched Big Bend like a scar, and through that wound oozes every animosity the century can muster: grizzled vaqueros who brand beeves beneath a merciless copper disc of sun; sod-busters fresh off Ellis Island, their fingers still tasting of ship’s brine, coaxing maize from caliche; and, circling like buzzards, the fence-cutters who turn boundary into invitation. Tom Norton—Stetson tilted just low enough to shadow the conscience he still pretends to possess—rides in with the Texas Rangers, a lawman whose badge weighs less than the memory of every man he’s ever hung. Eileen Nawn, Manhattan vowels still clinging to her syllables, steps off the stagecoach clutching a parasol and a copy of The Awakening, unaware that out here the only awakening comes at the business end of a Winchester. Between them unfurls a courtship as fragile as creek-bed cottonwood: stolen glances over smoldering mesquite embers, a waltz in the half-finished schoolhouse where the rain drips through warped shingles like metronomic doubt, and finally a shoot-out amid the ruins of a Spanish mission where swallows nest in the hollow eyes of forgotten saints. When the last rustler hog-tied, the lovers’ union is less a triumph than a reluctant armistice in a land that will keep on bleeding long after the end title.
Synopsis
A portrayal of the conflict between the pioneer cattle ranchers and the newcomer farming homesteaders in the Big Bend region of Texas: The problems for both sides are heightened by cattle rustlers who take advantage of downed fences. While struggling to maintain law and order, Texas Ranger Tom Norton falls in love with New Yorker Eileen Nawn, and the way is cleared for their romance when Tom rounds up the culprits.
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