"The Smoky Years" moves at a blistering ,furious pace, the characterization and dialogue is classic Le may. If you like John Ford Westerns or have read other Allen leMay books then this book is exactly what you are looking for in a Western. The story is simple: 3 men make up the King Gordon cattle combine.One of the men is murdered (by the competition)after succesfully bidding on a deal that will put his old rival effectively out of comission. One of the remaing partners doesnt want to take action against the killers, the other decides to recruit the toughest gunfighters and cowboy deperados to rustle away the competitors cattle on a massive scale.A cattle rustlin war ensues...Not a whole lot of " womenly sentimentality " in this one ,folks. I really dont care for Louis L'amour as a writer of westerns, if you didnt care for him and think Westerns arent for you ,then you should buy this book and "the Searchers". You are gonna love Allen le May . (Review ends with Comanche war cackle..)

Be careful when you read some of these reviews. A couple of these reviewers are writing about the movie, and don't appear to have read the book. No matter. I saw the film first, and--except for the pretty awful theme song that comes in at the otherwise memorable ending--it's as good as it's cracked up to be. Probably John Wayne's best film, and maybe even John Ford's as well. The book, however, is considerably different from the film. Ford and his screenwriters made many different choices, and I think this helps the reader who's seen the film. The story and characters are different enough to keep fans of the film in suspense. And for those who haven't seen the film I recommend it as a good, suspenseful, gripping read.

These people had a kind of courage that may be the finest gift of man: the courage of those who simply keep on, and on, doing the next thing ... -Alan Le May (on the Texicans)

It's muy chic in these days of political correctness to bemoan our ancestors' horrible misguided behavior in regards to the American Indians. In Leftist hindsight, the Indians have been converted into pastoral New Age environmentalists, facing off against a militaristic, technological behemoth. The novel The Searchers, basis for the great John Ford/John Wayne movie (The Searchers--1956), offers a necessary antidote to such fuzzy headed platitudinous twaddle.

The story begins in 1868 Texas; neglected by the military during the Civil War and now subject to the naive Quaker administration of Indian affairs, white settlements are being rolled back by persistent murderous Comanche raids. Living at the very edge of civilization are Henry and Martha Edwards and their children, Lucy, Debbie, Ben and Hunter. The couple are assisted by the young man , Martin Pauley, who they virtually adopted when Comanches slaughtered his family, and by Henry's brother Amos, a quiet, taciturn man who seems to be irresistibly drawn back to the ranch time and again. But then one day Marty and Amos are lured away from the ranch when a Comanche party steals a herd of cattle. They pursue them for quite a distance before realizing that they have been tricked. By the time they arrive back at the Edwards ranch, it is in ruins, the parents and the boys are dead and scalped and the girls are missing. As every movie viewer knows, what ensues is a years long quest by Martin and Amos (Ethan in the movie) as they search for the girls.

Martin is driven by a memory of how he ignored Debbie on her last day of life, Amos appears to be driven by darker demons. Eventually, Martin has an epiphany:

Amos, Mart realized, no longer believed they would recover Lucy alive--and wasn't thinking of Debbie at all. Seeing Amos' face as it was tonight, Mart remembered it as it was that worst time of the world, when Martha lay in the box they had made for her. Her face looked young and serene, and her crossed hands were at rest. They were worn hands, betraying Martha's age as her face did not, with little random scars on them. Martha was always hurting her hands. Mart thought, "She wore them out, she hurt them, working for us."

As he thought that, the key to Amos' life suddenly became plain. All his uncertainties, his deadlocks with himself, his labors without pay, his perpetual gravitation back to his brother's ranch--they all fell into line. As he saw what had shaped and twisted Amos' life, Mart felt shaken up; he had lived with Amos most of his life without ever suspecting the truth. But neither had Henry suspected it--and Martha least of all.

Amos was--had always been--in love with his brother's wife.

At first they are accompanied by Lucy's fiancé, but when he thinks that he has spied Lucy dancing around a fire in the Comanche camp, Amos brutally explains that what he's actually seen is a young buck wearing her scalp. The young man, driven mad, attacks the camp and is killed. From there on, Amos and Martin have only each other and Martin increasingly realizes that they do not share the same obsessions:

Mart had noticed that Amos always spoke of catching up to "them"--never of finding "her." And the cold, banked fires behind Amos' eyes were manifestly the lights of hatred, not of concern for a lost girl. He wondered uneasily if there might not be a peculiar danger in this. He believed now that Amos, in certain moods, would ride past the child and let her be lost to them if he saw a chance to kill Comanches.

In the coming years they survive Indian attacks, blizzards, comic misadventures, robbery attempts and the like as their search narrows in on Scar, a chief of the Wolf Clan. Along the way, Amos develops a grudging respect for Martin (even making him his heir) and the two become the stuff of legend, known to the Indians as "Bull Shoulders" (Amos) and "The Other" (Marty).

This is historical fiction in the grand manor, combining an exciting story and extensive historical background to create the kind of mythos that is central to a nation's understanding of itself. What emerges is a more balanced sense of how precarious a situation these early white homesteaders faced as they pushed into Indian territory and, while not justifying racial hatred, it makes the animus between the races more understandable. This is a great American story, with an obvious debt to Moby Dick (Amos/Ahab, Marty/Ishmael, Scar/Moby); the movie will always preserve our memory of the tale, but it deserves to be read too.

GRADE: A+

EVEN IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE-WITH JOHN WAYNE- DONT PASS THIS UP. PLEASE. IT IS AS GOOD AS A WESTERN CAN BE. YOU ARE RIGHT THERE ,LOOKING OVER ETHAN'S SHOULDER AS THE STORY UNFOLDS. I WANT TO SEE JAMES DRURY '' THE VIRGINIAN'' PUT THIS ON TAPE ALONG WITH LEMAY'S OTHER CLASSIC-THE UNFORGIVEN! YOU WILL WANT TO KEEP THESE TWO BOOKS IN YOUR LIBRARY. IF YOU DONT READ THIS BOOK- YOU ARE CHEATING YOURSELF!!!!!!!!