Bill Brett's folk tale of life in the Big Thicket takes place in the years around the turn of the century. Brett heard the story from the old man who had lived it. He retells it as a captivating, earthy yarn that won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award for folklore in 1978, when it first appeared in cloth edition.
The narrator, a young man hurt in an oilfield accident and down on his luck, runs out of money. When the opportunity presents itself, he steals a small herd of steers and a horse and sets out to drive them to a distant market. Suddenly his plans are halted...