Dakota Cowboy

Book excerpt: "I've known about Ike Blasingame all my life, knew many of his fellow punchers, white and Indian. Ike was certainly a salty representative of the Texas bronc twister when he came North with that most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador. . . . [He] takes the reader across the treacherous Missouri River as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the round-ups, the prairie fires. . . . There is the authentic smell and feel of the Northern cow country of fifty years ago in the story Ike Blasingame tells."-Mari Sandoz"Here is one of the most gripping Western tales since Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy was published in 1903. The telling is considerably like Adams'-warm, human, flavorful. The author, a one-time Matador ranch cowboy, . . . lived his story, and he tells it straight in the language of the cow country without contrivance."-New York Times"Many of the cowboys who have written about their experiences never really looked at any wider segment of the cattle business than was visible between their horses' ears, but Ike Blasingame did. He paints a big picture without omitting details."-New York Herald-Tribune