If it were possible to have a novel that was the result of a collaboration by Ned Buntline, James T. Farrell, and Donn Byrne, it would, I suspect, be rather like "The Big Sky," by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.… To say this is not necessarily a disparagement, for each member of the disparate triad I have just mentioned is, in his own métier, an excellent storyteller. So, for that matter, is Mr. Guthrie. Yet despite this great and nowadays unusual merit, the book has certain artistic disharmonies that make it seem to me not quite the masterpiece its publishers think it is.

This is a historical novel, and its milieu is one much favored by the contributors to Beadle's Dime Library; that is, the Wild West before there were any gold-rushers, cowboys, cavalry, professional bad men, or breech-loading rifles…. Mr. Guthrie, though, differs from the old dime...