Pardners Of The Dim Trails

Well known for his sketches, paintings, and sculptures of the Old West, Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) was also an accomplished author in the humorous genre known as "local color." Raphael Cristy sorts Russell's writings into four general categories: serious Indian stories, men encountering wildlife, cattle range characters, and nineteenth-century westerners facing twentieth-century challenges. Russell's art is often misinterpreted as mere longing for a fading open-range west, but his writings tell a different story. Cristy shows how Russell amused his peers with stories that also delivered sharp observations of Euro-American suppression of Indians and humorous treatment of wilderness and range issues plus the emergence of women and urbanization as bewildering agents of change in the modern West. "A welcome departure from the usual biographies and coffee table volumes on Russell and his art. . . . [Cristy] deals with an important, yet relatively unexplored, aspect of the career of one of the most influential interpreters of the American West."--Byron Price, Director, C. M. Russell Center for the Study of Art

Walt Coburn?s father pioneered in Montana Territory, joined the Vigilantes who chased road agents, and eventually built up one of the biggest cow outfits in the young state. The Circle C Ranch spread over thirty thousand acres in northern Montana, near the town of Malta. ø Walt is rather small for age fourteen?only ?stirrup high? to his pony Snowflake?when he works on the Circle C and learns a lot from the tough cowboys, and from his own scrapes and falls. His summer vacation from school increases in excitement when Kid Curry and other members of the Wild Bunch loom on the horizon. Stirrup High conveys all the know-how and atmosphere of roughing it on a ranch in 1903.