The Bad Lands

Andrew Livingston — Harvard man, banker, political operative — comes to grief in New York City. He settles the rest of his family with his sister and heads west to the Bad Lands in the Dakota territories. As he scouts for land and crew for a cattle ranch, Livingston meets Lord Machray, a newly established large-scale cattle rancher who has big plans backed by money from back east. Livingston also meets Yule Hardy, a long established cattle rancher and head of the local stockraisers association and its auxiliary, the local vigilante group. Livingston gets his ranch up and running, and finds himself front and center in the battle to determine the character of the territories in the final years before statehood.

A straightforward western, then, where newcomers clash with the established, which gets worse when the newcomers change from cattle ranchers to farmers (I expected sheep headers to show up to make matters extra nasty, but they don’t). Hall makes the story deeper and more complex by weaving in characters and subplots, chief among both is Machray, an extravagant and flamboyant Scottish adventurer who has a bagpiper, erupts in poetry and entertains his workers with highland flings. Women ably carry the story too. There’s a madam (of course) with an extremely sharp business sense who takes up with Machray, and Hardy’s daughter, who despises the Bad Lands and sees Livingston as a way out.

Hall tells the story vigorously, but at a measured pace. Livingston is also an artist, which lets Hall present the landscape (and occasionally people) with details and perspectives you wouldn’t expect from ranch hands or cattle barons. The subplots are laid out with varying degrees of subtlety. The fitness of the Bad Lands denizens for the life that’s coming gets leaned on a little too heavily. Livingston’s belief in organized and official channels of law and justice is slightly less tedious, saved by the ambiguity of his reaction to the failures of official channels after the malefactors in the final battle are handed over for trial (although the Afterword may resolve the ambiguity depending on your point of view).