Business ain’t easy when the locals stand to lose it all.
“Molly conceived a resentment against the rich cattleman who could impose such restrictions and embitter the lives of poor people. And as for Traft’s tenderfoot nephew, who had come out of Missouri to run a hard outfit and build barbed-wire fences, Molly certainly hated him.”
Although he doesn’t know cattle or cowboys, Missourian Jim Traft finds himself as the foreman of a tough Arizona outfit tasked with fencing a hundred miles of open cattle range. Brought on by his wealthy uncle, he faces this difficult trial with youthful aplomb.
But Traft faces a community that stands to suffer because of this new drift fence, and he must walk a fine line in order to honor his uncle’s business while not incurring the wrath of longtime residents. The Drift Fence shows how this tender young man struggles to overcome the odds he faces and ultimately wins over the heart of the beautiful young lass, Molly Dunn.
Zane Grey (1872-1939) is an American author known for his action adventure stories set in the American West. Before his writing career took off, he was a minor league baseball player and a licensed dentist. Riders of the Purple Sage, his most famous novel, launched a prolific career that included 90 books and an estimated nine million published words.