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The two mustangs moved warily, edging away from the man smell and the strangeness. Both had good lines and showed evidences of speed and power. There was a lineback that he liked, a dusky, powerful horse, still wearing his shaggy winter coat.

There was a curious affinity between man and dog. Both were untamed, both were creatures born and bred to fight, honed and tempered fine by hot winds and long desert stretches, untrusting, dangerous, yet good companions in a hard land.

He smelled the stale sweat of his body, the smells of tobacco, horse and greasewood smoke that lived with him. A fly lighted on the back of his hand, he heard the sound of water running over stones. Around him were the grey bones of a long dead tree. His shoulder cramped. There was no movement; only a small bird started to land in a clump of brush, then veered away...and Hondo took a chance...

Can't resist re-reading this and adding some notes and pictures. Hondo apparently started out as a novelization of L'Amour's screenplay for the John Wayne movie, but if I were casting Hondo, I'd be inclined to go with Eric Fleming, best known for his role as Gil Favor in the TV series Rawhide.

The story of a lonely man hiding his loneliness behind a cloak of independence, a man as bleak as the land over which he rode, yet beneath the harshness and the necessary violence, a kind man, a just man, a man who had come to terms with the land in which he lived.