An Eastern writer of Western stories, told he has never seen the West, goes to Montana to gather material and is put to work punching cows by men who know exactly what he is. Bower was Bertha Muzzy Sinclair, and the initials were deliberate — readers assumed for years that the creator of the Flying U outfit was a man. She had lived it, which is the joke and the point. Fifty-one paintings by Frederic Remington and George Catlin, from wild horse chases to Apache figures, give the Montana that Bower rode through a visual record to match.
