This account details an intimate portrait of the intellectual friendship between two commanding figures of Western letters and the early enviromental movement - Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto. The authors of popular works - Stegner most well known for his novel "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and DeVoto for his history of western exploration, "The Course of Empire" - they also played important roles in the efforts to stop government and private interests from carving up the vanishing West.