The Bandit of Hell’s Bend

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

First published 1924

Amazon

2.5(5)

An Arizona cattle ranch known as the Bar Y becomes the centre of a struggle over inheritance, rustling and control of the surrounding range. Ranch hands, townspeople and suspected outlaws are pulled into the conflict as competing interests try to determine who will own the property and who can be trusted to defend it.

Set in the cattle country of the late nineteenth-century American West, the novel uses isolated settlements and uncertain law to make property disputes potentially lethal. Water, grazing and livestock represent both livelihood and power, while the line between rancher, bandit and hired gun depends heavily on who has enough local influence to define the law. The mystery of the raids is therefore inseparable from the struggle over who can make a claim to the range stick when documents, possession and force point in different directions.