Cow-Country

In hot mid afternoon when the acrid, gray dust cloud kicked up by the listless plodding of eight thousand cloven hoofs formed the only blot on the hard blue above the Staked Plains, an ox stumbled and fell awkwardly under his yoke, and refused to scramble

Margaret Muzzy American author Sinclair of Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy (November 15, 1871 - July 23, 1940), better known by the pen name B. M. Bower specialized in producing works of fiction about the American Old West. Her works, which depict cowboys and cows from the Montana Flying U Ranch, showed "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for contrast, a sense of the western landscape as both harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting." She married three men: Bertrand William Sinclair, a Western author, in 1905; Clayton Bower in 1890; and Robert Elsworth Cowan in 1921. But she decided to go by Bower when she published.