Montana 1948

 As the Hayden family is a well respected family within Mercer County you could say that they are the law. At one point in the book Wes himself in fact says, “They couldn’t arrest us-we are the law.”  Wes is shown at the start of the text as a fairly laid back sheriff. As we enter the text we find that he has to deal with harder cases and relationships. One of these is that of conveying information to families of their loved ones deaths or accidents. Wes is shown as a strong character and deals with his job and family in two different mind frames. This is seen when Wes overcomes Julian’s comments about Frank being everything that he wasn’t and, “that fucking uniform”. Julian feels that if Wes was in uniform then he wouldn’t be arresting his brother over something as petty as this. The law is confronted and challenged in many ways in the text. The death of Frank ends up solving most, but not all of Wes’ confrontations. Julian also gets his way to a point; he still has his untainted family name and is happy that Frank died with his high esteem and social standing. All of which involve Wes and his relationships with different people within the County.

Having the job of county sheriff passed down from father to son, the relationships the Hayden family has have great influence as to what is going to happen within the county. These relationships extend from father to son, brother to brother and family to family. Wes and Julian are shown to have a fairly one sided relationship. Wes is pressured into obeying Julian but at the same time obeying his job as the Sheriff. This relationship between father and son is stretched and in the end breaks the families apart never to be fixed again. This links into the two separate families, these are Wes and his immediate family; Gail and David, and then, Julian and Enid, his mother and father. These two families have different opinions as to what should be happening with Frank’s case. On one side Gail wants to let Frank go as it is too trying on the family and David, as nothing will come of the case even though they know what Frank has done. The other is that of Julian thinking that there is no need to lock up Frank as it is only a petty crime that shouldn’t be prosecuted for and also because Frank is Wes’ brother. This relationship between Frank and Wes is shown in the text as a fight for their father’s attention. Wes was always seen as the one looking up to his brother and always being slightly jealous of his older, more popular brother. Frank being the respected war hero and doctor from their family for the county, nothing was seen to be wrong with Frank or his doings in the county. Until Marie Little Solider spoke up at this point Frank felt he had to do something about it before his reputation became tainted. This brings us back to Julian and his reasons for his pressing comments to Wes.

As to the question asked in the start of this essay, what is Wes to do when confronted by his conscious and his fathers pressing opinions? You can see that Wes overrides his fathers words and does what is right, but in the end the death of Frank does solve their problems and so Wes and his conscious are left with some doubts thus they leave Mercer county. The relationships between families, brothers and sons are sometimes compromised because of the high standing the Hayden’s in the county. You can say that Julian did have an impact on the book but in the end got his way because the family name wasn’t tainted with rumours or accusations.