"Twelve and still 'man of the family' Ralph talks his mother into letting him take a summer job on a Colorado cattle ranch, and this is the story of that summer. One gets every phase of the work on the home ranch, where Little Britches earns the right to be called Ralph, and treated like a responsible adult." Kirkus.

The fatherless Moody family moves from Colorado to Massachusetts in 1912, when Ralph enters his teens. There, he discovers that 'just little things that would have been all right in Colorado' now get him into trouble. He is sent to his grandfather's farm in Maine, where he finds adventures.

Ralph Moody, just turned twenty, had only a dime in his pocket when he was put off a freight in western Nebraska. It was the Fourth of July in 1919. Three months later he owned eight teams of horses and rigs to go with them. Everyone who worked with him shared in the prosperity - the widow whose wheat crop was saved and the group of misfits who formed a first-rate harvesting crew. But sometimes fickle Mother Nature and frail human nature made sure...

"In the early 1920s cowboy and dry-range farmer, Ralph Moody found himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market, a the dealings of a crooked partner. He faces the choice of declaring bankruptcy before he turns twenty, or working off the intimidating balance against him. His fortunes seem to be turning when a flash flood takes all he owns, and he is forced to auction off his farm and animals. Ralph never surrenders,...