The Silver Desert by Ernest Haycox

Haycox is a venerated Western author, with many of his stories becoming classic movies, including John Ford's Stagecoach with John Wayne and Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific.

Lily Tennant was escaping the pressures of Hollywood when she met Tom Sebastian herding cattle on the road to Reno. She has worked her way from bit parts to a starring contract with Superb Pictures, but wary now of the privacy and decency she might lose. She had taken this time off with fellow actress Kit Christopher and Jay Stuart, Producer, despite telegrams from Superb to return at once. Tom wants them to see the real desert and drives them out to Barrier, his 250,000-acre ranch North at the Oregon line. They arrive after a deadly dispute with the neighboring gang led by the DePard Brothers. They have been rustling cattle off his land for years and are waiting for the chance to take it over. They are emboldened by roughneck Buffalo Galt, son of the aging local town Madame, Belle Gibson; father unknown. Tom has thirty-five men working the range, dedicated to staying on Barrier as long as they live, but this is 1935, and when the bank shuts down, it looks like the land can be taken from Tom, dead or alive.

With inscrutable gray eyes and hair as black as ink, Tom is even more attractive than he appears on the cover art. The tagline "she bought her way into a range war" is wrong, but in this lonely land where anything might happen, the romance between them grows strong overnight. They want each other, and that is all there is to it. Haycox balances the plot well, adding surprises from the Sheriff, the Madame, and Charm, the dark-skinned beauty who lives on the Barrier ranch with her fatherless baby. Westerns feature dynamic shootouts, but also characters of deep moral strength and honor. Lily will find it hard to leave.

1935 / Paperback / 192 pages