Fiction

The Long Drift

Name: The Long Drift
Author: Sam Brown
ISBN: 9780783814483

by Sam Brown

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Overview

Casey Wills and Johnnie Lester had worked for most of the larger ranches in Texas at one time or another; both men had reputations as being great with horses and cattle. But like most cowboys, they tended to get into trouble whenever they were around women or liquor. As Casey put it, "We were better off once we got out of town because, as we had proven over and over, the battles we waged against the temptations of the flesh and demon rum were notably short and historically unsuccessful." As much as Casey loved being a cowpuncher, drifting from one job to the next whenever he felt the urge to move on, he also had started to think seriously about putting down roots. So when Ike Holt offered Casey, Johnnie, and their friend Ab an opportunity to earn a lot of money, they jumped at it. All they had to do was round up about five hundred horses and get them up north by April - that's when the government was going to open up Indian Territory lands to settlers. The boys would sell them to the homesteaders, who would be desperate for livestock. They anticipated getting fifteen dollars a head with five dollars a head going to Ike. The complexities of making hard choices - and living with the consequences - gives universal appeal to this funny, romantic, sometimes tragic look at life on the trail.

As the tiny Western towns exploded with settlers, the days of open range and the great cattle drivers were shuddering to a close. Casey was torn between the desire to put down roots and his love of cowpunching--going from one job to another in pursuit of something he couldn't quite pin down, something he called the Long Drift.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This sequel to The Big Lonely easily surpasses its predecessor in style and emotional sincerity. Narrator Casey Wills, only a youth in the first volume, is now a grizzled veteran who, like many others, spent his youth and energy looking at the south end of northbound cows and seeing the country from between the ears of a horse. He longs to buy himself a small spread and settle down. While a business deal to capture wild horses and sell them to waiting Boomers in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 doesn't proceed smoothly (and costs the life of a friend), it does give him the necessary capital. Unfortunately, he spends the money in a search for the missing husband of Miroux Sevier, with whom he has fallen in love. To make matters worse, he finds the man, and a sense of spousal duty keeps Miroux with her husband. One last cow drive turns disastrous, and one of the pokes involved sets out to track down and kill the man responsible. Casey once again gets sucked in and may end up losing his liberty-or his life. Brown drives the novel along like a Saturday-afternoon serial. Period detail, credible dialogue and an intimate knowledge of the life of a herder (monotony punctuated by frenzied activity and danger) enliven this well-told tale. (May)

Wes Lukowsky

Casey Wills, protagonist of the Golden Spurnominated "Big Lonely" (1992), is still trying to settle down in the West of 1887. Along with saddle buddies Ab and Johnnie, Wills gets his opportunity to accumulate a stake when the trio is hired to gather the horse stock left behind when a ne'er-do-well Texas rancher commits suicide. It's a financial success but a personal tragedy when Ab dies during the roundup. Ab's lonesome death cements Casey's desire for a spread of his own, so he parts company with Johnnie and heads to Nebraska, where he begins his homestead. While in town, he sees, then meets Miroux Sevier, a mysterious French-Canadian beauty. They fall in love, but she's married. Her husband has been gone for seven months, and she has not heard from him, but until she learns her husband's fate, she won't marry Casey. He embarks on a journey to determine once and for all if he can end his long drift and settle down with Miroux. Once again poet and onetime cowboy Brown gets it right. The daily struggle of average folk--not gunslingers and bad men--against the backdrop of the frontier makes for compelling reading.