From the master of the western comes a novel full of romance and adventure. Rancher Bill Belllounds brought up Columbine as though she were his daughter. Out of affection for her foster father, Columbine agrees to marry his son Jack, who is a drunkard, gambler, coward, and thief. But she really loves the cowboy, Wilson Moore. Then, the Mysterious Rider appears at the Belllounds ranch, a man of middle age, gentle, kindly, but so formidable a gun fighter he has earned the nickname Hell Bent Wade. He will play a pivotal role ...
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From the master of the western comes a novel full of romance and adventure. Rancher Bill Belllounds brought up Columbine as though she were his daughter. Out of affection for her foster father, Columbine agrees to marry his son Jack, who is a drunkard, gambler, coward, and thief. But she really loves the cowboy, Wilson Moore. Then, the Mysterious Rider appears at the Belllounds ranch, a man of middle age, gentle, kindly, but so formidable a gun fighter he has earned the nickname Hell Bent Wade. He will play a pivotal role in righting the wrongs in the story.
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The Mysterious Rider perhaps would have been better titled, Beauty and the Beast, and I am not in any way being disparaging. Zane Grey used the same type of plot lines for many of his books, and then added an extra character to bring the book to its logical conclusion. A young girl, the adopted daughter of a wealthy rancher, is forced to marry the rancher's no-good, drunk of a son, while the young girl loves another cowboy as different from the son as could possibly be--a similar scenario is found in Heritage of the Desert. But here a "mysterious stranger" is on the scene to make things right. And we can all guess who this "mysterious stranger" is, can't we? If you can't guess, I'm not going to tell you and ruin the book. Still, having said that, this book is a good Zane Grey romance told as only the master of historical romance could tell it, and worth reading--even more than once.
