356 Western American Literature the diptych itself, the two journeys: the first, long, under the Summer Solstice; the second, shorter, under the October rain. There is less to say the second time. Ash, the king of this foursome, admits: “Today’s truth is basically the same, though quieter and calmer as seems to be the providence of age.” So what has changed between the two adventures? Del Rio has bought a tent; Russell knows more about his camera. They miss Monday Night Football. The women who float distortedly in the background of the Boys’ Club have progressed some: Kathleen, the faerie queen who was ill during the first journey, is well in the second. However, the tangible proof offered for hope is no more substantial than those leaves on the tree in the second act of Wait ingfor Godot. The intangible hope offered by Doog, the seer, is more significant: “we shine anew whenever we will.” This legacy will not “blow your socks off,” but perhaps this map with all its frayed edges and blank spots will provide you with an interesting little walk. CAROL LONG, Willamette University Cowboy Riding Country. ByJohn L. Sinclair. Illustrated by Edmond DeLavy. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. 191 pages, $19.95.) Cowboy Riding Country takes in a lot of territory, from the grassy eastern plains around Roswell, New Mexico, to the Peloncillo Mountains at the opposite corner of the state. In time it ranges from the late nineteenth cen tury, through the 1920s when John Sinclair first knew the territory, and on to the great historical turning point of our time — the Day of Trinity. Sinclair’s attractively illustrated book is a hymn to a past culture, a culture that found its center, for Sinclair, in a small cabin in the Capitan Mountains near Lincoln, the town made famous by Billy the Kid. In the days when Sinclair worked on the ranches of southeastern New Mexico, cowboys despised most books as “foofaraw,” and Sinclair did not parade his literary ambitions. But he did absorb the atmosphere, from the smell of the Amonett Saddle Shop in Roswell to the stories of cattlemen and outlaws that he heard wherever cowboys gathered. What emerged from the experience reminds the reader of Henry David Thoreau, J. Frank Dobie, and Eugene Manlove Rhodes. The historical parts of Cowboy Riding Country recall how it was in those days when John Chisum drove his first herd into New Mexico and built an empire that eventually included 100,000 head of cattle. The story of Billy the Kid is obligatory, of course, for a writer who lived so close to the scene of the Kid’s legendary jail-break and who later served as Curator of the Lincoln County Museum. But he also resurrects other larger-than-life westerners, perhaps the most notable being Burton C. Mossman, founder of the Arizona Rangers, U.S. Deputy Marshal, and ranch manager, whom Sinclair knew on Roswell’s “cowboy corner” in the late 1920s. Reviews 357 There is folklore in Cowboy Riding Country as well. The author remi nisces about the songs that he heard and sang in the bunkhouses, songs like “When the Work’s All Done This Fall” and “Brown-Eyed Lee,” or that favorite of cowboys, “Little Joe the Wrangler,” not actually a folk song but the work of “Jack” Thorpe, another of the bookish cowboys of southeastern New Mexico. Like J. Frank Dobie in The Longhorns, Sinclair devotes an entire chapter to the “crackly, smelly, long-lasting, wonderful rawhide” that provided the cowboy with ropes, whips, buckets, trunks, and lashings to hold virtually anything together, from corral rails to split wagon tongues. Although Sinclair ends his book with the assertion that “Cowboy Riding Country will ride on forever,” the reader may not agree, having been affected by the ubi sunt theme of the last two chapters. “Packhorse to Plumb Paradise” tells of an abortive plan to homestead in what is now a central part of the White Sands Aiissile Range, and “Light on Dark Mountain” recalls the impact of the first atomic bomb test that forever changed a portion of Sin clair’s favorite territory. The reader is likely...