The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister

THE VIRGINIAN, Wister's best-known work, is a heavily fictionalized story of the Johnson County War in 1890s Wyoming. The story recounts the conflicts over cattle theft between large and small ranchers in the new, sparsely-settled state. The novel takes the side of the large ranchers, and depicts lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the hero as a necessary part of maintaining law and order. THE VIRGINIAN is widely regarded as being the first true American western novel.