The Tall Texan — Lee Floren

Tough as whang leather, he rode out of nowhere into a lawless border town and took over. They called him drifter, snake, sodbuster. The place he picked to stake his claim was part of the powerful Circle N outfit, but their men and their guns couldn't stop him. He was the tall Texan, and he had come to stay...

Clinton Harrison, itinerant gambler and adventurer, was running a card table in Wood Mountain, Canada, when he heard from a drifter of his brother's whereabouts. So when the gold rush in Canada petered out, Clint headed for Montana and Settler City, where his brother Matt had holed up after a five-year jail term for shooting a cowman.

Clint had expected trouble, Matt had meant trouble to him ever since their boyhood together in Texas. But he hadn't bargained on a full-scale war between the cowmen -- headed by the Circle A ranch owner, Wad Hawkins, whose herd was being depleted by rustlers -- and the farmers who were gradually homesteading in the rich Montana Territory.

What was intended on a short visit with his brother turns out to be a complicated riddle, the answer to which spells out Clint's future. The participants is that riddle are:

Sig Westby -- taciturn, thoughtful, vindictive -- and his sister Janet, who plays up to Matt.

Meg Hawkins -- beautiful, bitter, who hates her father, and dreams of far-off cities and glamor.

York Shaw -- who looks more like a cowhand than a farmer.

Wad Hawkins -- a powerful ranch owner whose decisions mean peace or war between cowman and farmer.

When Clint is knocked out cold twice, accused of stealing cattle, and nearly killed in a fire of his brother's holdings, he is determined to fight, like any other tall Texan. Men fought for money or women, but he could see no woman to fight about. The fight must be for money. And what represented money in the West? Land, of course. And something else -- cattle.

Now how were the Circle A cattle disappearing in such quantities? And who stood to gain by having Circle A fight the homesteaders?