The confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers is a region of the USA steeped in histories of the mountain man, fur traders and the northern upper plains nomadic tribes. I joined a veterinary practice there in 1960, directly out of veterinary school. Our clients included townspeople, river valley farmers, high prairie dry land wheat farmers and ranchers, and North Dakota Badlands ranchers, the later doing their best to wrest a living from government grazing leases and their too small homesteads. All were determined, independent-minded folks who expected their veterinarian to be physically tough, knowledgeable about all species of animals, and skilled in the practice of the profession. Our animal patients were the same as they are today prone to the same illnesses and injuries. They were for the most part stoic and never embarrassed by anything they did or that was done to them. The characters in this book are those people, those animals, and that time and place. This is also the story of the personal relationship between my new bride and me as we learn to cope with being away from family, making new friends in a community foreign to us, and being Jewish in an area of the country with few Jews and a history of anti-Semitism. The story is complicated by the strained relationship between the veterinarian I work for and his wife and her family.
