THE LAST CATTLE DRIVE

When Spangler Star Tukle of western Kansas is utterly pissed by trucking rates, he decides to drive 250 head of cattle on a 15-day trek to the Kansas City stockyards and save freight charges. Only old Jed, son of deaf mute parents, who speaks in the declarative (""You do not drive the truck backward. We will crash""), has ever been on a trail drive. The ""last drive"" is made over highways and big bridges, with the cattle bedding down in post office parking lots and farmyards, by culverts and cloverleafs. Along the way kate citizens and cops try to obstruct the drive, but Spangler is nothing if not pigheaded, foulmouthed--and fueled by scotch. The narrator is a young tenderfoot schoolteacher, who is forever pursued by (and trying to avoid) a rich young thing in toss-away clothes and a yellow MG. Fetching, with some tall, raunchy saddletalk and a style as clear as sweet buttered corn.