Summer's Lease (Large Print Edition)

Lawrence Orme, a man who has left his work as a professor in the East, comes to the countryside near Ringbone, Wyoming, to stay in a place in the country called the Lodge. After meeting the landlord and the country neighbors, he meets some overbearing riders from a ranch in the area. He also meets merchants in town. Many of the local people treat him with condescension, treating him like an educated person who has no practical knowledge. Lawrence has told people he is interested in finding work to help him meet his expenses, and the foreman of the near ranch offers him a temporary job as a kitchen helper.

At the ranch, Lawrence meets the cook, the owner, and a brute who lives in the bunkhouse but is rumored to be the son of the owner. He also meets a woman who is the owner's mistress, but when he exchanges a couple of words with her, he incurs the jealousy of the foreman, who punches him. The boss then fires him.

Lawrence returns to the Lodge, only to find the body of an obnoxious young man he had met in town when he first arrived.

Lawrence goes to town to report the body, and there he meets some of the townspeople, including the woman he saw at the ranch where he worked for a short while. He learns her name and agrees to talk with her later.

As Lawrence becomes friends with some of the country neighbors, he hears parts of the history of the arrogant ranch owner, including his possible parentage of the brute. In a subsequent visit, Lawrence learns that the ranch owner is exploiting the grazing on another ranch that is inactive as it goes through probate.

Lawrence has an encounter with the arrogant rancher's mistress, who would like to get free of her situation. She and Lawrence become intimate.

Lawrence attends a meeting in town in which one of his country neighbors is running for public office. People express a need for more law enforcement, including for protection of grazing rights on public and private land.

Rumors now circulate about the country neighbor who is running for office, and the man has to go to unnecessary lengths to assert the falseness of the allegations. Before long, this neighbor is found dead for no apparent reason. Lawrence has developed an interest in the man's sister, but she remains reserved, as he will find out later, because of disastrous developments in her own past.

Lawrence confides in a lawyer in town in order to find out more about the abuse of grazing rights. He finds out that the unoffending neighbor who was running for public office and turned up dead was also looking into the death of the obnoxious young man, as part of his sense of obligation as a candidate for public office. Lawrence has a second encounter with the ranch owner's estranged mistress, and he continues to pick up snippets about the arrogant rancher's past.

Following a lead about a woman who, according to a local horseman, bears a striking resemblance to the brute, Lawrence goes to Guerdon, a town in the north. Lawrence gets caught in a heavy rainstorm and visits Guerdon in a time of mud. After asking some ineffectual questions, he is accosted in the dark, beat up in the street, and knocked down in the mud for his efforts.

Back home, Lawrence goes on a tour of the lower socio-economic class in Ringbone. There he meets people who were present years earlier when a woman came to town and appeared to want to exact child support from the arrogant rancher. She had whitish blond hair, as did the obnoxious young man who ended up dead on the doorstep of the Lodge.

Lawrence visits with the estranged mistress again, but the situation is so tense that they are not at liberty to frolic. Leaving his meeting with her, he is beat up in the street and comes to consciousness in the company of a couple of businessmen, who have taken him in and make light of his predicament.

Lawrence, not seeing much humor in these developments, goes home to the Lodge and practices with his rifle and pistol. He goes back to town and looks for the estranged mistress, but she misses their appointment, and he finds her dead in her hotel room.

Lawrence visits with the sister of his deceased neighbor, and they share their past histories. He tells of leaving the teaching profession because of his participation in a secret society espousing eugenics, and she tells of her catastrophic marriage in which her husband took the wife of a friend and died in a murder-suicide.

By now, Lawrence has a lead on the husband of the white-haired woman who came to town years earlier. Lawrence goes to visit the man in Indiana and finds him soft and weak and bloated from chronic drinking, but Lawrence convinces him to come to Wyoming to do the right thing and tell of what happened when the white-haired woman disappeared.

Lawrence is trying to hold the old drunk together and to allay his fears when the arrogant rancher, his foreman, and the brute arrive at the Lodge. Another ally of Lawrence's, the hired man of the deceased candidate for public office, is standing by. A shootout occurs in which the old drunk is killed, along with the foreman. A chase incurs, in which the neighbor's hired man shoots the brute, and Lawrence ends up in a hand-to-hand fight with the rancher. The antagonist gets hold of Lawrence's .38, but the neighbor's hired man stops his effort when he whacks the rancher in the head with a rifle butt.

In a resolution scene in town, clarification comes out about the deaths that have been uncertain so far. Lawrence and Lydia, the woman with whom he has developed an interest, look forward to spending more time together.