Riders of the High Mesa

Written in 1927 this is an early work of Ernest Haycox's. A typical "oater" with rustlers, lynch law, and one suspect--Lin Ballou. He was accused because he was merely riding the High Mesa. But what neither faction is this story knew--neither the town nor the rustlers--was, Lin was doing a special job valley. One not even related to the troubles in the valley. Ernest Haycox draws several fine and memorable characters in the work, and you can see the beginning development of the writer he was to bercome, and who is credited with elelvating "westerns" to the stature of serious literature. This short novel is a great read you will enjoy. The other novel Alder Gulch in this double is based on the truth of the vigilante action which took place in Montana when the sheriff became the head of organized crime. Henry Plummer was his name. Jeff Pierce is on the run from his past when he meets Diana Castle who asks him to accompany her to Virginia City, and the action just jumps from that moment on. When Ernest Haycox was contemplating the writing of this book he consulted anyone he could who might possibly know anything about the Alder Gulch, Montana rush, and luckily he found a man who could describe in vivid detail every street, every business, every activity, the stage routes into the area and where a road agent might attack, whatever went on in Virginia City. Haycox also asked him how a respectable and single young woman might have made it in 1863, and the man wasn't sure, yet perhaps as a waitress, or a seamstress, or a household servant--from On A Silver Desert, a biography of Ernest Haycox. In Alder Gulch Diana Castle opens a restaurant in a tent. Alder Gulch is a solid novel with solid historical background to be the underlying story line; but the characters Haycox creates to fill the action are just as solid and believable. You will become engrossed in each of their lives as they struggle to make it--just as each of us struggle in this mundane world of ours today. Highly entertaining, historically informative, a plain old good read I think you will like.