The Flying U Strikes

Flying U

by B.M. Bower

The day Chip Bennett and Weary Davidson came upon some slaughtered Flying U cows with their hind quarters skinned out, they knew that cattle rustlers were on the rampage. Then a hidden rifleman tried to shoot them out of their saddles -- a warning that something even more sinister than rustling was happening. But even shrewd Chip never suspected that Big Butch Lewis was rounding up gunmen from all over Montana in a sweeping plan to make the range a stronghold for outlaws.

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

239 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy, best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying R Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting.

Born Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, MN and living her early years in Big Sandy, Montana, she was married three times: to Clayton Bower, in 1890; to Bertrand William Sinclair,(also a Western author) in 1912; and to Robert Elsworth Cowan, in 1921. Bower's 1912 novel Lonesome Land was praised in The Bookman magazine for its characterization. She wrote 57 Western novels, several of which were turned into films.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I broke down and used up the rest of my gift certificate to order four more Bower titles that i found at my favorite online used bookseller. I especially wanted to read this one because it was published the year before Trouble Rides The Wind and I wanted to know what had happened in an incident Chip referred to in that book.

So this 1933 title is another of Bower's later books that talk about early days in the life of one of her recurring main characters, Chip Bennett. I am crazy about the books Bower wrote in her early years. I found a bunch of them at Gutenberg and worked my way through them by publication date, from 1904 to 1923. She could certainly create the atmosphere, her cowboys were both realistic and human, and her horses were tops.

But these later books feel a bit like she is reaching back to something and not quite able to catch it. The old Bower sparkle is gone, or at least only shows up here and there. This one did explain what i wanted to know (why Chip did not have two of his horses any longer) and it was an exciting story, but honestly, it was too much of Chip going off by himself and getting into trouble because of his own self-centeredness. I suppose she wanted to go back and add some biography to Chip's story, and this book helps explain the man more than he had been explained in other tales, but like I say, the overall sparkle is mostly missing.

Here Chip has decided that the cattle carcasses that he and Weary find in the first chapter are being killed because of an old feud between himself and a bad guy from a previous book. So Chip decides he needs to go off on his own and solve the problem. What he stumbles into while out prowling around is bigger than he can handle himself but it takes him a knife wound and a pretty girl to realize it. How will Chip save himself and the ranch too? Or can anyone do that?

One part that I thought was kind of cute was what Chip said to himself when he realized that he was seriously wounded from the stabbing and needed to let his body rest up at the pretty girl's family headquarters while other men began to take charge of the problem. He gave himself up to staying in bed while his body recuperated, and tried to cheer himself up by saying at least he didn't have to wait for a broken leg to heal.

So why is that cute? Because in the book Chip Of The Flying U, the one that as far as I can tell introduced Chip to the world back in 1906, he gets laid up for months with a nasty broken ankle. I thought it was a nice little bit of hinting at what was to come, even if it had technically already happened.

I have just one more book now that will have Chip and his buddies in it, and I just started reading it today (Jan 21, 2020). And I found that although Wiki claims it was published in 1940, the book itself says originally published in 1929, so it threw my Read Bower By Publication Date system all out of whack. Note to self: check the dates in the actual book next time!

And by the way, even though this is not the place to be talking about that last book (I have two other Bower titles to review and the book itself to read first) I can say already that with the 1929 book Bower is back to sparkling. It will be a fitting way to end my month of revisiting the Happy Family gang.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast-paced story of outlaws and cowboys, with Chip Bennett caught trying to help out his friends at the Flying U and, while spying on the enemy, finding himself in the midst of a much larger bit of foul play than a few butchered cattle led him to expect. And the saucy Polly Taylor at first seems to him to be a pest, but she might just save his hide...

The one thing I’d have liked to hear in addition would have been a little epilogue about the horse.

Content: too much swearing, including several profanities, but mostly d* and h* in lots of spots.

[Garth Mailman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Flying U Strikes
by B.M. Bower

What’s a ranch with free-range cattle without some cattle rustling. In this case the culprits are shooting the beeves and skinning out their hind quarters to pack them out to the local forts to sell to the army.

Although this book was published 27 years after Chip of the Flying U, first book in the series, it predates even that book in historical order as here Chip Bennett is still a precocious teen, not foreman of the Happy Family and the aging gentle horse his son, The Kid--Buck--rides, Silver, is a yearling colt; and he, Chip has yet to meet the little doctor--Dell.

It wouldn’t be all-american without a blood bath at the end.

[Ralph · Rating 4 out of 5]

The later books in the series are getting more typically "western"--cattle rustlers, gunfights and chisel-featured good guys. Good read!