Pioneer rancher W. H. Hamilton met the challenges of wolves, mosquitoes, and sticky, sometimes impassable soil, called “gumbo” in Harding and Butte counties in the 1880s and 1890s. A trailblazer in the transition from the open range to the small ranch, he loved the cowboy life and the wild country between his Belle Fourche River homestead and his Cave Hills ranch. In a new introduction, historian Thomas D. Isern familiarizes modern readers with the range-cattle industry and northwestern South Dakota landscape.