<p>The reality of frontier life in Kansas in 1872 becomes brutally clear to twelve-year-old Coady McIlvain when his father is scalped by hostile Indians and Coady is taken prisoner. Coady is determined to escape and does so falling in with a buffalo sharpshooter named Dylan Griffith whom he sees as the embodiment of his hero Buffalo Bill Cody a role in which the circumspect Griffith feels himself totally inadequate. <P>The two face real adventure surviving the unforgiving terrain with Coady’s former captors on their trail and with outlaw Comancheros to be avoided. <P>In <I>The Big Fifty</I>—another name for the famous Sharps rifle—Johnny D. Boggs has created a gripping Western story with constant juxtapositions between the myths and legends created by Eastern storytellers out of the actual often brutal realities of frontier life.<p>