cover image Snowy Range Gang

Snowy Range Gang

Mike Blakely. M. Evans and Company, $16.95 (190pp) ISBN 978-0-87131-670-7

At the beginning of this slow-moving western, Texas range-regulator Claude Duval is planning to retire from tracking rustlers and settle in Wyoming. Then former client Bob Steck asks for help recovering 100 headstet sing/eed of Brahma bulls just stolen; Bob believes the bulls are being moved toward Wyoming by Lone Wolf Wolverton, an old foe of Claude's. Claude and Bob are joined by rancher Ike Lafferty, who is furious when his few, recently acquired Brahmas are stolen, too. Beautiful Correen Galloway, newly widowed by the rustlers, next joins the motley posse and is soon followed by Wolverton himself, innocent and eager to clear his born-again name. But the bad guys, the Snowy Range Gang, get the drop on the white hats, leaving Claude and his cohorts marooned horseless in the mountains. Blakely ( The Baron of the Sacramentos ) gets them out of their mess with little aplomb to conclude this dull tale, marked by sentimentality, cliche and made-for-TV plot devices. (Mar.)