As a former Westerner himself, Viking Penguin associate publisher Paul Slovak is ever on the lookout for strong Western material. His latest find is Augusta Locke by Colorado novelist William Haywood Henderson, whose two previous novels, Native and The Rest of the Earth, were published at Dutton. His new book is a saga covering the 90-year life of his protagonist, who as a runaway single mother with a baby daughter begins homesteading in Wyoming in the 1920s; it is a long, tough life in which Augusta often has to pretend to be a man to do men's work. Slovak bought North American rights from Chuck Verrill at Darhansoff, Verrill & Feldman and plans to publish two years from now.