Robert Welles Ritchie

“ Wister with a sense of humour passing the average Eastern visitor's admittedly scanty endowment. "He made it funnier than it really was," the native critics aver; and this is high praise from a community jealous of its own inimitable talent for story telling. The Virginian carries far with these people, who fancy themselves and their neighbours walking through the virile pages of the novel. It is right—the only Western story ever written that is "right'way through," say they. It is right because Mr. Wister got his material from men who were living the life portrayed in his narrative. ”

“ In Johnson County, Wyoming, the old-timers will still tell with reminiscent pride of Frant Osborn and the babies—old Frant Osborn, who used to "carry his load of poles so high, wide an' handsome! He rode with the L X Bar outfit, did Frant, and in the winter of Eighty-nine, or maybe it was Ninety, he and a bunch of the boys from the L X Bar home ranch on South Fork rode over to Hank Devoe's ranch to cut in on the dance. ”

“ Steve, the one-time saddle companion whom the Virginian was forced finally to run down in the cottonwoods and hang for a horse thief; him the wise ones believe they have identified infallibly. The real Steve, whom Mr. Wister met and talked with, was one of the cowmen who "went wrong" in the feud that culminated in the war of '92 between cattlemen and rustlers, and he was killed at K C ranch. ”