text: We are in the last part of the 19th Century in this novel, and the Wild West has breathed its last. The book is peopled with real legends (Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull) and fictional curiosities (Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone - two Mountain Men, and No Ears - an Indian with exceptional eyesight). McMurtry relates a sad, elegiac farewell to times past. The ever-interesting characters and their views of the world, which are wise and funny and fascinating, make the novel top-notch in the McMurtry canon
  