The Cadillac Cowboys — Glendon Swarthout

In his search for the Old West of romantic legend, Professor H. Carleton Cadell of Connecticut, with rich wife and two teenaged stepp-daughters in tow, arrived at that outpost of civilization -- Scottsdale, Arizona. They buy a house (pseudo-adobe-mock-tile-roofed-baroque-hacienda--sort of) on Sarcophagus Mountain. At their first cocktail party they meet Wall Streeters, oil magnates, and dowagers; but the prize is Eddie Bud Boyd, last of the cowboys, now a commission cattleman, resplendent in ranchman's costume and 12-gallon hat. Here is the Old West! On his part, Eddie Bud sees in Cadell his first friend among these rich dudes and his entree into the Scottsdale social whirl. So begins Eddie Bud's downfall and Cadell's disillusion. The last cowboy has made his pile and now wants something to show for his money. The realtors sell him a house on Fast Draw Drive -- a $150,000 rococo-Polynesian job. Sponsored by Cadell, Eddie joins the Camino d' Oro Country Club for $5k, and his troubles begin when his new young ranch wife Christobel causes $220,000 damage to a neighbor's property in her first drive in her new Cadillac. Other expensive catastrophes also occur. Even a quiet Sunday ends in disaster when a group of old-time cowboys come down from Wickenburg to town. At the Camino d' Oro bar, one whiskey leads to another, and the party winds up as a rodeo in golf carts, causing devastation to greens and fairways. One funny crisis follows another, until Eddie Bud finally hits the skids with tragic force in spite of H. Carleton's dramatic efforts to save him. But old cowboys never die, and Eddie Bud finally finds a Western role to play on a surprising new range.