Prairie Trails

On the wind-scoured high plains where barbed wire glints like spun frost, Tex Benton—leather-chapped, silver-spurred—arrives as both suitor and storm. Janet McWhorter, lamb-soft yet flint-hearted, is the prize her sheep-baron father will surrender only if the cowboy consents to swap mustang for merino, a Faustian bargain that rankles his cattle-blood pride. One whisky-slashed brawl later, Tex bolts town, chased by the black-hatted Jack Purdy whose revolver clicks like a metronome of doom. A runaway chestnut mare explodes across the dust, flinging Boston-bred Alice Endicott into Tex’s orbit; the rescue brands him kidnapper in every gossiping eye. Pursuit folds into counter-pursuit: Janet shackled in a box-canyon cave, Alice shivering in false captivity, Purdy laughing at the moon. Tex—galloping along knife-edge ridgelines, lariat whistling—finally pendulums from a ponderosa bough above a 300-foot gorge, scoops Janet mid-air, and slams her onto his saddle as gunfire ricochets off granite. Dawn finds them exchanging vows beneath a sky so wide it swallows every echo of sheep and feud.