The Buster

Title: The Buster
Genre: Western Fiction
Author: William Patterson White (1884-c.1954)
Publisher: A. L. Burt Company, New York, New York
Year: 1926 (third edition of 1920 book)
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover with linen cover, no dust jacket.
Provenance: “VE/7” marked in pencil on first page.
Chapter Title Examples: The Man; Swing Kyler; The Girl; Coryell Regrets; The Red Horse; The Stranger; The Black Bear Cubs; Lander’s; The Calf; The Riders; The Beginning; Two Women; The Mean One; The Warning; Diplomacy; A Visitor; The Tamarack Trail; Whistler’s Rest; The Rope; Dogrib; Tamarack Creek; The Cold Cream Jar; Rudy Orison; The Scuffle; The Bushwhacker; The Yearling; The Ashes of Life.
Opening Sentence: “Dear Bill: If you haven’t anything better on hand at present I wish to engage you for the summer—guide, you know, Bill.”
Random Passage: “Bill Coryell and Smoky Nivette were sitting on the front steps of the Two Bar ranch house. The half-breed was leaning back against the peeled trunk of a white pine porch pillar. His head was thrown back, and his eyes were half-closed. A cigarette dangled at one corner of his wide mouth. Now and then Smoky passed a flat thumb across his stubby mustache, now and then he drew long and lingeringly at the cigarette, but more often he sat motionless and enjoyed the perfect weather and the fact that he was alive.” (from Chapter XVI, A Visitor)
Notes: According to what I’ve found on author William Patterson White, he resided in Las Cruces, New Mexico from 1910 until his death in the ’50s. His only child, a son, received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the University of Texas in 1951. More recently, some of the elder Patterson’s other Western novels have been repackaged as affordable e-books.

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