"Buffaloed" and Butchered

This is another great, yet seemingly accidental find. I'd never heard of John Williams, nor his remarkable novel Butcher's Crossing set in the heyday of the buffalo hunter in the American western frontier, until I came across a review of a recent re-release of another of his works, in which a tantalizing summary of this book was included.

Why this title is not better known is surprising. It is quite well written, and presents an amazingly evocative, and involving recreation of a buffalo (okay, Bison) hunt, or more accurately, slaughter. It is shown as a dream, as a kind of work, a source of greed, and ultimately an uncontrollable, manic path of destruction.