The English Horses

Luckey's 12th western is a lively horse opera set in 1889 New Mexico. Wealthy Englishman Gordon Meiklejon buys the giant L Slash ranch and proceeds to enclose it in barbed wire. His pasture-deprived neighbors are more than just unhappy; his biggest problems, however, are cattle rustler and horse thief Jack Holden (an outlaw and despoiler of young women) and mustanger Burn English. But Jack never steals too much at one time, and Burn figures wild horses are his property if he can break them, no matter whose land they are on. As Meiklejon adjusts to the West's harsh ways, he realizes he must accept some compromise with these men. Romance, however, interferes: his housekeeper, Katherine Donald, is a pretty spinster courted by Jack, Burn and a cowboy with a hidden past. Also figuring in are a Mexican outlaw, an old-timer who knew Burn as a boy, a reprobate father, a doomed young boy with a big mouth, a love-struck teenage girl, a lightning strike and a curious killing. Add in loads of horse sense, and the result, until the abrupt ending, is a bronc-busting oater with colorful characters, vivid scenery and snappy dialogue. (Apr.)