The Big Drift

The Big Drift, by Patrick Dearen, is an old-fashioned novel about cowboys, something that I find to be refreshingly right. Except for the issue of race, which runs straight through the narrative, this book could have been written any time in the last 100 years.

The time is 1884, the setting is Texas, between the Pecos and Devils Rivers. A black cowhand named Zeke, who is on the run after accidentally killing his former master, finds a white cowboy, Will Brite, tangled with his horse in some barbed wire. Will is grateful for the rescue, but not eager to make friends with a black man, especially considering a secret that Will harbors.

But after meeting the fellow ranch hands, Zeke is given a job, and when a blizzard hits its hard going, as the cows scatter, giving us the title. The descriptions of cold and snowy conditions may make you pull your sweater or comforter further around you.

Zeke and Will will forge a bond, especially when Will falls for a young woman who has an abusive father (I wonder if Dearen knows that he is given a character a name--Jessie Alba--that is almost the same name as a semi-famous actress?). Zeke knows something about her that Will doesn't though--she's a mulatto. This section is a bit melodramatic and veers into romance novel territory, but it's all in keeping with the old-fashionedness.

This is book is ideal for young Western fans, should there be any, as it's completely clean (which, if you've seen Deadwood, is historically unlikely) and very spiritual. Zeke sometimes has aspects of "the magic negro," or the black man who seems to know everything about the human soul. But it's not overdone.

Meanwhile, we get lines like this, which we may have heard before but so what: "'This country's always hell on horses and women,' said Hyler, 'Especially women.'" Or how about this one: "He was a cowhand, and to a cowhand, a promise was a sacred pact not to be broken." Yippi-ki-yo-ti-yo!