The story of the men who carried the mail westward, told in a lovely style

"Twelve and still 'man of the family' Ralph talks his mother into letting him take a summer job on a Colorado cattle ranch, and this is the story of that summer. One gets every phase of the work on the home ranch, where Little Britches earns the right to be called Ralph, and treated like a responsible adult." Kirkus.

Ralph Moody, just turned twenty, had only a dime in his pocket when he was put off a freight in western Nebraska. It was the Fourth of July in 1919. Three months later he owned eight teams of horses and rigs to go with them. Everyone who worked with him shared in the prosperity - the widow whose wheat crop was saved and the group of misfits who formed a first-rate harvesting crew. But sometimes fickle Mother Nature and frail human nature made sure...

Fortified with Yankee ingenuity and western can-do energy, the Moody family, transplanted from New England, builds a new life on a Colorado ranch early in the twentieth century. Father has died and Little Britches shoulders the responsibilities of a man at age eleven.--From publisher description.

The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in Little Britches and Man of the Family, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes...

"Seabiscuit, champion of thoroughbreds, inspired such warmth and affection with horse lovers the world over that his every race seemed a matter of life and death. As trainer and horse, Tom Smith and Seabiscuit were a perfect pair, and with Jockey Red Pollard they made unforgettable history." Huntting.

"In 1826 an undersized sixteen-year-old apprentice ran away from a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, to join one of the first wagon trains crossing the prairie on the Santa Fe Trail. Kit Carson (1809-68) wanted to be a mountain man, and he spent his next sixteen years learning the paths of the West, the ways of its Native inhabitants, and the habits of the beaver, becoming the most successful and respected fur trapper of his time." "From 1842 to...

"In the early 1920s cowboy and dry-range farmer, Ralph Moody found himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market, a the dealings of a crooked partner. He faces the choice of declaring bankruptcy before he turns twenty, or working off the intimidating balance against him. His fortunes seem to be turning when a flash flood takes all he owns, and he is forced to auction off his farm and animals. Ralph never surrenders,...

Ralph Moody steps off a freight train in western Nebraska with only a dime in his pocket and ends up, three months later, as the leader of a first rate harvesting crew.