Ernest Haycox 
The Earthbreakers 

The Earthbreakers is a western adventure by Ernest Haycox. Haycox was an American writer of Western fiction. Excerpt: 'Loose soil and pine stems whipped by; overhead the steady hiss of the wind kept on. The horses footed steadily forward from one rocky ridge to another, down a long slope and across the insecure ford of a swollen little river near its junction with the big river; and somewhere in the noisy day he heard a man’s weak voice cry out. Fifty feet distant a horse stood on a rocky flat with its rump to the wind. A few cows stood under the shelter of a tree and a small tent, ripped from its pegs, slapped back and forth beneath a branch to which its peak had been tied. Riding in that direction he discovered Alpheus Stricklin’s head stuck out from a cocoon of soaked blankets.’