An Eastern narrator arrives in Medicine Bow and meets a tall, soft-spoken Southern cowhand known only as the Virginian, who answers an insult with “When you call me that, smile.” Over the years that follow in Wyoming cattle country of the 1870s and 1880s, the Virginian courts the spirited schoolmistress Molly Wood, contends with the sullen Trampas and faces rustlers and frontier justice.
Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt and published in 1902, it set the pattern for the cowboy hero. Download the free EPUB.