RAK, MARY KIDDER. A Cowman s Wife, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934. Unglossed, impersonal realism about life on a small modern Arizona ranch. Mountain Cattle, 1936, and OP, is an extension of the first book.
REMINGTON, FREDERIC. Pony Tracks, New York, 1895 (now published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio); Crooked Trails, New York, 1898. Sketches and pictures.
RHODES, EUGENE MANLOVE. West Is West, Once in the Saddle, Good Men and True, Stepsons of Light, and other novels. "Gene" Rhodes had the "right tune." He achieved a style that can be called literary. The Hired Man on Horseback, by May D. Rhodes, is a biography of the writer. Perhaps "Paso Por Aqui" will endure as his masterpiece. Rhodes had an intense loyalty to his land and people; he was as gay, gallant, and witty as he was earnest. More than most Western writers, Rhodes was conscious of art. He had the common touch and also he was a writer for writing men. The elements of simplicity and the right kind of sophistication, always with generosity and with an unflagging zeal for the rights of human beings, were mixed in him. The reach of any ample-natured man exceeds his grasp. Rhodes was ample-natured, but he cannot be classed as great because his grasp was too often disproportionately short of the long reach. His fiction becomes increasingly dated.
The Best Novels and, Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes, edited by Frank V. Dearing, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1949, contains an introduction, with plenty of anecdotes and too much enthusiasm, by J. Frank Dobie.
RICHARDS, CLARICE E. A Tenderfoot Bride, Garden City, N. Y., 1920. The experiences of a ranchman's wife in Colorado. The telling has charm, warmth, and flexibility. In the way that art is always truer than a literal report, A Tenderfoot Bride brings out truths of life that the literalistic A Cowman's Wife by Mary Kidder Rak misses.
RICHTER, CONRAD. The Sea of Grass, Knopf, New York, 1937. A poetic portrait in fiction, with psychological values, of a big cowman and his wife.
RICKETTS, W. P. 50 Years in the Saddle, Sheridan, Wyoming, 1942. OP. A natural book with much interesting information. It contains the best account of trailing cattle from Oregon to Wyoming that I have seen.
RIDINGS, SAM P. The Chisholm Trail, 1926. Sam P. Ridings, a lawyer, published this book himself from Medford, Oklahoma. He had gone over the land, lived with range men, studied history. A noble book, rich in anecdote and character. The subtitle reads: "A History of the World's Greatest Cattle Trail, together with a Description of the Persons, a Narrative of the Events, and Reminiscences associated with the Same." OP.
ROBINSON, FRANK C. A Ram in a Thicket, Abelard Press, New York, 1950. Robinson is the author of many Westerns, none of which I have read. This is an autobiography, here noted because it reveals a maturity of mind and an awareness of political economy and social evolution hardly suggested by other writers of Western fiction.
ROLLINS, ALICE WELLINGTON. The Story of a Ranch, New York, 1885. Philip Ashton Rollins (no relation that I know of to Alice Wellington Rollins) went into Charlie Everitt's bookstore in New York one day and said, "I want every book with the word cowboy printed in it." The Story of a Ranch is listed here to illustrate how titles often have nothing to do with subject. It is without either story or ranch; it is about some dilettanteish people who go out to a Kansas sheep farm, talk Chopin, and wash their fingers in finger bowls.