Kid

Winky thought he'd seen everything in Wyoming Territory: rustlers, hangings, shoot-outs, cattle standing frozen stiff in the snow. Then into town one lazy day rode a long-haired kid and a colossal African mute. They were met in the saloon by Fiddler Jones, whose hair and temper flared like a wasps' nest. Fiddler's yellow eyes fell instantly in love with the kid's pouch of gold dust. That pouch was worth killing for. Fiddler was no stranger to trouble, but the trouble he found in the kid and the mute took everyone by surprise. It just kept coming, like nothing Winky had ever seen before. "The Kid is in the best myth-shattering and rambunctious Twain tradition." --Jack Conroy, the Chicago Sun-Times "Seelye is not only up to something unusual, but perhaps something quite profound."--New York Times "The western of the season."--New Republic "Here we have a skilled hand working with broad humor in a lusty, free-wheeling vernacular and with a story that emerges as a kind of American tragedy, Western style." --Philadelphia Inquirer John Seelye is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina and the author of The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Melville: The Ironic Diagram.