Unwanted, Dead or Alive by Gene Sheldon

[Colleen0701]

This western by Gene Sheldon is easy on the mind. It's a light read, but Sheldon is good, he constructs his characters too look half silly at a glance, but when you really look, they're not silly at all and express their thoughts and feelings in ways which show much deeper layers than you thought they were capable of.


Buck Hawkins and Dobie Garrett (no relation to Pat Garrett) are two 'fair to middlin' cowboys' as they describe themselves.


After the coldest winter in the Texas Panhandle either of them can remember, they lose their jobs on the Singletree ranch when the owner loses the property to the bank, in the form of the most distasteful Finsterwald.


A couple of months later, Dobie gets into a brawl with a man he kills accidently. Now they're on the run for murder and find out that Finsterwald has accused them of cattle theft as well.


Buck and Dobie, mostly Dobie, figure that if they're wanted men and are going to hang anyway, they might as well turn to a life of crime, thus they decide to go on the 'owlhoot' trail.


This doesn't go so well and by the time Mary Lou forces them to kidnap her, she puts her finger on the point of the problem by telling them that neither of them has a dishonest bone in their bodies.


But when it comes to planning, Mary Lou is in among the finest and they all hope their bad luck at being outlaws will change once they rob the notorious Barker gang who robbed Finsterwald's bank an hour before they were going to rob the same bank.


A great light read which left me chuckling many times. I can't wait to read how Buck and Dobie lost the west. I rate this book 4 stars.