Hewey Calloway, the best-loved cowboy in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years. In 1889, Hewey and his beloved brother, Walter leave the family farm to find work in the West Texas cow country. When Walter falls in love with a boarding-house girl and begins dreaming of a farmer's life, the fiddle-footed Hewey, content to work for six bits (seventy-five cents) a day, jumps at the chance to rescue him from this fate worse than death. He takes his brother on a mission for boss C. C. Tarpley, driving six hundred head of cattle from beyond San Antonio to the Double-C ranch on the Pecos. Hewey's natural propensity for getting into jams makes the journey memorable and dangerous...and when the drovers return to the Pecos, they find Boss Tarpley in the midst of a range feud with a neighbouring cowman.