High Steaks

In April 1902, Owen Wister published The Virginian, widely considered the first cowboy novel. Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, the bestseller contained many of the tropes we associate with the Western — the open range and the gunfights at high noon — and established a genre that would make Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, and countless others famous.

Toward the end of The Virginian, the tenderfoot narrator urges his (presumably) Eastern reader to avoid black and white value judgments, especially when it comes to cattle country: “Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!” The realities of right and wrong can change quickly, he explains with several examples. But even as he attempts to defend the West, to show that it requires a nuanced approach, he concedes defeat: “Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his...