Devil in Spurs

Devil in Spurs is a historical romance by the American writer Norah Hess, published in 1990. It is set on a horse ranch in the Wyoming wilderness.

Jonty Rand has grown up in a bawdy house, and she has spent her whole life dressed and behaving as a boy in order to escape the attention of the cowboys who frequent the place. To her way of thinking the most notorious womaniser among them is Cord McBain, and it is Cord whom her grandmother's dying wish makes her guardian. Cord has no idea of her real identity, and he sets about turning what he takes to be a soft youth into a hard-working wrangler, riding his charge relentlessly through the isolated country and giving Jonty the heaviest tasks the ranch has to offer. The novel follows what happens when the truth about her becomes impossible to keep, and it places the relationship inside the work of the ranch rather than away from it.

Hess wrote western romances over a long career, and this is one of the books set in that part of the American West.