Overview
Vintage Hardcover with rare Dust Jacket in Good (G) condition. DJ has light edge wear and light chipping. $3.50 price still present. Page clean and straight. Rare.
For thirteen-year-old Adam Vance, manning the mail station (in the Southwest around 1895) means coping, and showing his father he can cope; after all, several men have deserted without explanation. But Adam learns quickly--to start cooking (after killing and plucking) before his father and Uncle Seth ride in to exchange mailbags; to ax a rattlesnake (the pot lid it's hiding under is too precious to ruin by shooting a hole through it); to stall two outlaws, and then outwit them when they return at night. Camped midway between the rattlesnakes' den and their water source ("run" is the pathway), he encounters four in his first twenty-four hours, keeps his cool head while acknowledging fright. When older, city-bred Frank, whom Adam's father finds to take over, opts out, the boy takes pride in the recognition of his competence; his sense of self is more fully defined when his father praises his quick-witted action for rattlesnake poisoning just as the boy pain-fully perceives the limitations of his years. Quiet heroics in an elemental setting, Steinbeck-like attention to detail in the surround, vital cameos brightening the portrait in a pleasantly familiar frame.