The Quirt

"B.M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. This is one of her stories."@en
"Prolific Western writer Bertha Muzzy Bower penned dozens of novels detailing the difficulty and unique beauty of ranch life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Quirt centers on a struggling ranch of the same name and the travails and triumphs of the extended family that fights to keep it afloat."@en
"The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions. Hunter and Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and for a mile and a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hired two men, cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fed their cattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously through the summer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay their grocery bill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buy what clothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fell ill. Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey to rheumatism that sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionally indulged himself in a gallon or so of bad whisky and suffered afterwards from a badly deranged digestion."@en