The themes of death and life converge naturally in the first three stories, preparing readers for the final section of the sequence, "The Leader of the People." This story brings the sequence to an end with another vision of death and change. Jody's grandfather comes to visit, retelling his timeworn stories of the great wagon crossing. Carl Tiflin cruelly hurts the old man by revealing that nobody except Jody is really interested in these repetitious tales. The grandfather realizes that Carl is right, but later he tells Jody that the adventurous stories were not the point, that his message was "Westering" itself. For the grandfather, "Westering" is a force like the frontier, the source of American identity; now with the close of the frontier, "Westering" has ended. Westerners have de generated to petty landholders such as Carl Tiflin and aging cowboys such as Billy Buck. In...