L'amour pot boiler: Cattle drive, murder, gold.

Louis L’Amour. North to the Rails (1971) Tom Chantry comes West to buy cattle. He was raised in the East by his mother after his father, a marshal, was killed by three outlaws. She impressed him with her horror of violence, which leads to his refusing a fight, and having to redeem his reputation. This he does on the cattle drive, after partnering with French Williams, a man of dubious integrity. A subplot involving Williams' equally dubious cousins complicates the story enough to fill the usual 200 or so pages of a mass market paperback.
     Here L’Amour is writing to formula. He’s best in his sparse but intense descriptions of the landscape, the work, the weather. The characters and the plot provide just enough scaffolding to prevent the story from collapsing. Below average for L’Amour, which makes it merely average for the genre. *½