Wild Freedom

Published: 1922

Wild Freedom has all of the elements of a great Western novel: lawlessness, rugged individualism and savage Indians (even though they are by today’s standards somewhat stereotypical). It involves animal lover Tom, the wilderness, and the love of a woman named Gloria. 

Twelve-year-old Tom Parks and his father John are crossing some nameless but frigid mountains when John is killed by a fall into a stream. So heartbroken Tom holes up in a cave, trying to attract passersby with fires (his burro has been killed by a mountain lion and his gear is too heavy to tote). He spends two weeks helping a trapped mother-grizzly and her two cubs; he catches and feeds them fish while chipping away at a big boulder. When finally released, they accept him and are his only friends for the next four years: when they hibernate, he has lonely winters. But this Crusoe idyll ends when a badman shows up, kills the mother and one cub, and is himself killed by Tom--who, while scouting nearly 100 miles from his cave, comes upon the first settlement he has seen in all this time (for human talk he reads his two books, the Bible and Morte d'Arthur). Thus begins Tom's career as a thief: he steals an untamable mustang which is about to be shot, names it Peter, and now has two friends; he steals supplies and leaves pelts behind as payment.