The Long Shadow

by B.M. Bower

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Westerns

153 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 30, 2011

About the author

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy, best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying R Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting.

Born Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, MN and living her early years in Big Sandy, Montana, she was married three times: to Clayton Bower, in 1890; to Bertrand William Sinclair,(also a Western author) in 1912; and to Robert Elsworth Cowan, in 1921. Bower's 1912 novel Lonesome Land was praised in The Bookman magazine for its characterization. She wrote 57 Western novels, several of which were turned into films.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't get a chance in November to read any titles from my list of Bower works so I was eager to finish at least one this month. The Long Shadow was a bit darker than her usual 'Eastern Girl meets Western Cowboy and they fall in love at first sight' type of story.

Yes, there was an Eastern Girl: Miss Flora Bridger. And yes, she met a Western Cowboy by the name of Charming Billy Boyle. Charming Billy? It is because he sings that song all the time, especially when he is happy. You know the one, right?

"Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?
I've been to see my wife,
She's the joy of my life,
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Humble apologies if the tune becomes an earworm, but at least it will be out of my head now.

Anyway, they meet in dramatic fashion and part of the story shares the course of true love. But the darker part of the story is about the change that is coming to the open range country. Civilization is pressing in, with its fences, plows, farmers....what is a lifelong cowboy supposed to do with himself when he realizes that his world is threatened by that menacing, long shadow of civilization?

It was not a mere loss of dollars or of cattle or even of hopes; it was the rending, the tearing from him of a life he loved; it was the taking of the rangeland -- the wide, beautiful, weather-worn land—big and grand in its freedom of all that was narrow and sordid, and it was cutting and scarring it, harnessing it to the petty uses of a class he despised with all the frank egotism of a man who loves his own outlook; giving it over to the "nester" and the "rube" and burying the sweet-smelling grasses with plows.

Charming Billy and I were both near tears at this point. I love wide open spaces and Nature in all her glory, and so did he. What will he do? How will he live without the very essence of his soul? Will that Eastern Girl help or hurt?

The other Bower titles I have read so far as part of this personal challenge have all been light-hearted romps through cattle country. The Long Shadow has a bit more of a bite, like a lazy breeze on a chilly autumn day, hinting at the gloomy winter that is just around the corner. Quite frankly, I was impressed with the added dimension.

[Mikkel Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great style.

I really enjoyed Bowers writing. His characters were different but realistic. Dilly looks like a buffoon, but in reality, is an all around good man. Billy and Flora are the typical novelists couple trying to find there way to love. Pilgrim starts out to be a good for nothing, shines for awhile, then falls to disgrace. Bowers landscape descriptions are great. Not flowery but still picturesque.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

The genus 'Classic Western' as a rule involves adventures with buffalo and Indians, riding through vast open prairies, bar-room brawls, tinpot sheriffs, outlaws with hearts of gold, a shoot-out or two, and if you're lucky, a gold or silver mine with a tepee on it, all unconscious, like.

Yet, among all the hallowed names of Max Brand, Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, creeps in the name of B. M. Bower, a woman who writes westerns. Bower's novels in general are more down to earth than the usual Western. While the usual Western concerns itself with the righting of wrongs or actual crime by fair means or foul, Bower's novels generally concern legal rights of ranches and the men who run them, as well as the livestock on them. Lawlessness is not an option, as a rule, but the means of enforcing the law and social sanction seem to occupy her mind more than a shoot-out.

In this novel, The Long Shadow, Bower seems to encapsulate the whole history of mankind from a nomadic existence to an agricultural life, as man moves from a literally unfettered existence to find himself caged in and helpless.

A lawyer-turned-rancher and his foreman, a cattle herder to the very soul of him, find themselves ruined, first by the weather when a blizzard hits them in the peak of winter, and then when their neighbours on all sides start to enclose or fence in their vast ranch lands, cutting off their property and cattle from major water lines and grazing. As the financial and legal implications break in on them, the cowboy foreman suggests that he improve matters by taking a few of the boys and their six-shooters and clear the range of the fencers and the fences. The former lawyer knows that his neighbours, even the Indians, are within their legal rights to do as they wished with their property, so long as they left sufficient water in the creek so the rancher's cattle don't actually die of thirst – which they have. The rancher has few options left but to break his foreman's heart.

This is one of Bower's most realistic novels, bearing witness to the grim realities of a rancher's life, although the token villain is present, and so is the romance for the escapist charm of the true dime Western.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ‘ol cowboy story, with some twists about how the old wide-open ranges started to be fenced-in, and how that affected the people in the story. The good guys were very likable, the bad guys had mixed characters, and the romance was clean. Some swearing. Enjoyable read.

[Susan]

Cowboy yarn

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully well written, rip roaring cowboy novel.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a public domain book - it's from 1908 - I was sort of reading on my phone. I do this often, unable to resist the free old books. I don't usually bother reading too much of these books, but i found myself enjoying this and wanted to read it for real. I was, on my phone, but then I was given a kindle for x-mas, and it was even better. B.M. Bower was a prolific western writer and, yes, she was a woman. I quite liked this, and Iook forward to reading more by her.

[JACKSON · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very Good

I enjoyed the book very much. It is well written and has a very good storyline that keeps you're interest.