This is what happens when you're visiting for Christmas, run out of reading material, and have to cadge a book from your brother in law. I've been reading Zane Grey since I was a teen, but I don't think I'd ever read this book before. But it follows Grey's pattern, so there were no surprises.
Grey sure liked “pure" young women, living in threatening situations where their purity is desired by outlaws. His heroines are usually blonde and small, but good, brave riders. Lucy Bonesteel is just such a woman, just out of childhood and innocent about life in the real world. She's been raised in isolation in the backcountry of Utah, unaware of her father's reputation as an outlaw or his alternate identity as a rancher with a new wife and family. She hasn't had much female companionship and is sexually unaware as a result. (There’s no mention of her having a period, how she would deal with that, or how it was explained to her, important details in any young woman's life).
Kent Wingfield is also a typical Grey hero. He's young, handsome, good with a gun, and an excellent horseman. He loves the wild country and is honorable. He has fallen in love with Lucy's story before he has even met the girl. His courtship of Lucy is that of an honorable man--he's willing to kiss her, but marriage is uppermost on his mind.
As usual, Grey spends loving time on describing the scenery, reveling in the details of the desert and the canyons. He seems to have loved horses and dogs, natural companions for a hunter of his era. He did do some hunting, though his true love seems to have been fishing or maybe baseball. He writes of the trail so vividly that I keep thinking that his personal history should contain more horses!
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