Queen Betsy — Barbara Fry

Not every girl inherits a cattle ranch, and Betsy Eddington was thrilled. Not so her about-to-be fiance, Thurmon Finsterwald, who would have to wait while Betsy went to Texas to check on her inheritance. She pictured herds of Herefords in the fields, palominos in the corral and a huge ranch house surrounded by porches. Reality wasn't quite like that: there wasn't a cow in sight, the only horse was a broken-down hayburner named Valentine, and the porches had collapsed. But Betsy was determined to make a go of the ranch -- especially after she discovered how badly her neighbors, the Hanks, wanted it. Bad enough for big and bossy Abner Hanks to propose marriage! And especially after "Buck" Vaughan turned up in her bunkhouse. Buck was the best-looking young man Betsy had ever seen, but a young man with a past he didn't want to talk about and a score to settle with Abner...

The news that Betsy Eddington had inherited a forty-section ranch in Texas came like a bolt out of the blue. Betsy had seen the ranch as a money-making proposition -- and Miss Cowell a very wealthy woman -- when her father had painted Miss Cowell's prize-winning horses nine years before and Betsy had stayed in a rustic cabin three miles away from the ranch house. Now she was a cattle queen.

It meant giving up college in Missouri; it meant giving up Thurmon Finsterwald, to whom she was tentatively engaged -- Thurmon would never consent to the life of a rancher.

Betsy could not possibly have pictured what was to greet her on her arrival in the small Texas town nearest to her ranch. Mr. Podmore, her lawyer and executor of Miss Cowell's will, made it clear that Miss Cowell left the ranch to Betsy with restrictions. For one thing, she was not to sell it. And her nearest neighbors were anxious to get the ranch and become owners of all the land in Kress County. If they could get the land in no other way, big, boisterous but handsome Abner Hanks was quite willing to marry Betsy -- and his father, Clemmon Hanks, concurred.

With broken fences, sagging porches, with no electricity or telephone, her only means of transportation an old horse named Valentino, Betsy sets out to prove that she can beat the Hankses at their own game -- and end up as the cattle queen she had imagined herself to be.