FABULOUS EMPIRE

The West, in all its individualism, opportunism and grandeur, fondly, indigenously recalled in a testimonial to the old tradition. This is a biography of Col. Zack Miller, born bushwhacker who became a great showman. He took his schooling on the range, preferring cows, horses and mules to books, sold soda pop to Indians on the Cherokee Strip, traded horses, bucked outlaws and rustlers, and — in the early '20's-ran $1,700 up to $75,000 trading mules. He fell in love in youth with the daughter of a Spanish grandee who was promptly sent back to Spain; Zack's subsequent two marriages never matched the romance of his youth. When he fell heir to his father's ranch he built it to the proportions of an empire, his outfit formed a dare devil show. Then in 1926, when times and tastes had changed, that show met its first failure, and in 1929, Zack, with the rest of the country, crashed. The story recaptures the highspots of a high-riding era.