By Edward Abbey. Jack Burnes is a loner at odds with modern civilization. A man out of time, he rides a feisty chestnut mare across the New West -- a once beautiful land smothered beneath airstrips and superhighways. And he lives by a personal code of ethics that sets him on a collision course with the keepers of law and order. Now he has stepped over the line by breaking one too many of society's rules. The hounds of justice are hot in his trail. But Burnes would rather die than spend even a single night behind bars. And they have to catch him first.
An excellent short novel about an "anarchist cowboy" who gets himself arrested so that he can bust his draft-resister buddy out of jail. It doesn't quite work out as planned. Abbey is every bit as cantankerous in this early book as he was later. This was made into a pretty good movie by and with Kirk Douglas, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, which Douglas regards this film as his best film ever.
