A Harvard dropout heads west to join a buffalo-hunting expedition into the Colorado Territory, seeking some idea of unspoiled nature that the brutal, wasteful slaughter and a killing winter methodically strip away.
Books mentioned in Butcher's Crossing (2)
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville: Epigraph before Part One: "The Confidence Man, Herman Melville" attributed alongside the Emerson epigraph.
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson: Epigraph: "Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson / Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs."