THE HASH KNIFE OUTFIT by Zane Grey

"Mert Bartels won the honors in our Bullis Book Review Contest's over-18 category. His review is reprinted below for your reading enjoyment.

"Jed Stone, a low end cattle rustler and leader of the 20 year outfit in the untamed, wild area in the Tonto Basin and Mongollon rim country of Arizona, exemplifies the many characteristics of how the westerner lived up to the Code of the West. Like many Jed Stone, due to circumstances early in his life, was forced onto the wrong side of the law. Good men as well as bad men exhibited these virtues: loyalty, courage, hard workers, untalkative and protector of women and children, well for the most part. Stone's dilemma is whether he continues to manhandle the Outfit or to alter his ways to leave outlawry.

"Zane Grey also weaves into the novel the Traft family Diamond Ranch with its array of mostly young cowhands who face the natural elements, mean cows, low-down rustlers, dishonest gamblers, and two young women of opposite upbringing. Uncle Jim Traft has nephew Jim, who is a year new to the West, ramrod the Diamond. Jim's ill-health, purpled-eyed sister, Gloriana with an Eastern education and ways, appears suddenly from Missouri with a past that she wants unrevealed. Her bad experience with a gambler named Darnell spelled past family troubles and future ones too as Darnell has tracked her west. Meanwhile, young Jim has not only fallen for a low country girl named Molly Dunn from the Cibeque Valley, but he plans to marry her despite Gloriana's objections. The problems begin between Gloriana and Molly because apparently it's easier for ten men in a bunkhouse to get along than two women in one ranch house. Gloriana convinces Molly that she is unfit to marry her  brother since she has only back woods upbringing, thus Molly moves to town to work and get away from moonstruck Jim.

"An unusually enjoyable part of the story is how simple cowhands compete to spruce themselves up for the Thanksgiving dance in town and outdoing one another at Christmas time. Grey is a master of dialog to convey their joshing each other and their fawning all over the ladies from the ranch as well as the Flag town girls. No modern day writer can equal his use of western talk and character mood. He too vividly describes rock-faced canyons, hues of the forestry and amber colored  brooks, plus wildlife sounds.

"Besides attending to the Diamond ranch young Jim finds he is given land in Yellow Jacket country by his uncle. Jim sees this as an opportunity to build an adjacent ranch and pine-pole log house for his bride-to-be Molly. As Jim and cowhands build the ranch house some Diamond cattle are stolen. Something disruptive happens to Uncle Jim. From this point the bad element seems to control the action.

"The western genre extended by Grey herein evolves into the traditional battle between good and bad elements. Croak Malloy, vicious weasel-faced gunman, Sonora, a Mexican with no ethics, and Madden both gunhand and cook comprise some of the bad element. Malloy in every back-handed attempt tries to lead the rustlers away from Jed Stone to become the Hash Knife's leader. When will the inevitable confrontation between these two occur as we learn more of their inward code and beliefs brings us closer to the end? Malloy who is loyal only to himself joins forces with Bambridge, a dishonest cattle buyer, the cheating gambler Darnell and other rustlers to remove 5000 head of Diamond stock. What is to become of the Hash Knife Outfit as the potential for leadership may change?

The next question becomes what the Diamond hands and young Jim will do to thwart the rustlers. Who will rescue the kidnapped Gloriana and Molly from the outlaw cabin? Also, will Gloriana evolve into a tough, resilient western woman? Only the reader knows."