"Hallie Stillwell—ranch woman, justice of the peace, writer—was 
known and loved far beyond the Big Bend, where she spent most of 
her near-hundred years. In her second book she tells how she took 
up the reins after the untimely death of her husband, Roy, and held 
tenaciously, against all odds, to the ranch where they had shared an 
eventful though rugged life. Truly a legend in her own time, she had a 
great story, and she tells it with warmth and good humor."—Elmer 
Kelton

    When Hallie Crawford Stillwell died on August 18, 1997, she was 
two months and two days short of her 100th birthday. Hallie had 
published the first volume of her memoirs, I'll Gather My Geese, in 
1991. In that volume she told the story of her life as a pioneer ranch 
woman and wife in the Big Bend country from the time of her marriage 
in 1918 to the death of her husband Roy Stillwell in 1948.

    Before Hallie became too infirm to write, she completed ten 
chapters of the second volume of her memoirs. She herself titled that 
work My Goose Is Cooked. Betty Heath has assembled stories 
written by Hallie, collected newspaper articles, and gathered personal 
remembrances of Hallie to round out the volume.


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