The Smoky Years

This story begins somewhere around 1880-5: the Northern ranges are filling up with cattle, the Indians are pacified, Miles City is a-boom and barbed wire is a fact of life. But its beginnings go back further--at least 20 years. Dusty King and Lew Gordon are partners who've worked up to owning ranches and brands from the Rio Grande all the way to the Canadian line. But so has their rival, Ben Thorpe, who has been fighting them every way he can, legal and illegal. When King-Gordon wins grazing rights to a vast block of Indian lands--rights Thorpe needs to expand his operations--Thorpe and his two foremen gun King down in an alley in Ogallala. Bill Roper is the nearest thing King has to a son: at the age of five he was found in the trailside brush near his murdered father's body. He's grown up knowing nothing but Thorpe's machinations, and King's death is more than he can stand. Though Gordon has always been strong for law and order and takes pride in never having gone outside the law, King knew the cow business would never get on a sound basis "until Ben Thorpe is bust'," and Roper believes that. He urges Gordon to "carry the war into the other camp," but Gordon refuses, and Roper, helped by the old outlaw Dry Camp Pierce (who calls King "the best friend I had in the world"), sets to work to recruit a warrior band of hardcases to first destroy Thorpe's breeding ranches in Texas, then sweep his Northern ranges bare. It takes him three years and a lot of heartbreak, but it's what he feels he owes to King's memory. This is a story so epic in scope that it might almost be compared to the Odyssey or some other classic tale of military rivalry; certainly King-Gordon and Thorpe each control land enough to comprise a medium-sized nation, and fighting men to serve as the armies of same. Roper, despite the pain of his break with Gordon--and Gordon's daughter Jody, whom he has loved almost since he knew what love was--is resolved to win, and he proves to be an able and creative general, and one who inspires real loyalty in the hardcases he recruits. At the end you may wonder at the believability of it all, but as long as you're reading you're caught up in LeMay's world and never question it. Though not as polished or plausible as his better-known novels, The Searchers (Leisure Western) and The Unforgiven (Leisure Western), it stands on its own merits and even has its moments of lightness.

"The Smoky Years" moves at a blistering ,furious pace, the characterization and dialogue is classic Le may. If you like John Ford Westerns or have read other Allen leMay books then this book is exactly what you are looking for in a Western. The story is simple: 3 men make up the King Gordon cattle combine.One of the men is murdered (by the competition)after succesfully bidding on a deal that will put his old rival effectively out of comission. One of the remaing partners doesnt want to take action against the killers, the other decides to recruit the toughest gunfighters and cowboy deperados to rustle away the competitors cattle on a massive scale.A cattle rustlin war ensues...Not a whole lot of " womenly sentimentality " in this one ,folks. I really dont care for Louis L'amour as a writer of westerns, if you didnt care for him and think Westerns arent for you ,then you should buy this book and "the Searchers". You are gonna love Allen le May . (Review ends with Comanche war cackle..)