"A fifteen-hundred-mile horseback ride to win a bet, to prove a point, to honor tradition? It sounds like a tale straight out of the Wild West: a man, a horse, a grueling ride halfway across the country. The bet is between Jimmy Wakely, Hollywood singing cowboy, and Rolla Goodnight, Oklahoma cattle rancher and cousin of legendary Charles Goodnight. Frank "Pistol Pete" Eaton, Rolla's lifelong friend, provides the Osage Indian pony and a Colt.45.

Rolla's twenty-year-old grandson, Jerry Van Meter, is the man they are betting on."--BOOK JACKET. "Jerry must ride from Guthrie, Oklahoma, to Hollywood, California, in fifty days, taking only what he can carry on his horse. He sets out on May 4, 1946, bound for Hollywood - the hard way. Unfolding against the backdrop of a changing postwar America, this true tale of adventure takes you back to a different time on a journey you will not soon forget."--BOOK JACKET.