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Hot Iron

1956

Author of over 40 novels, and published over more than 50 years. Three of Kelton's novels have appeared in Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Four books have won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City: THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, THE GOOD OLD BOYS, THE MAN WHO RODE MIDNIGHT, and the text for THE ART OF HOWARD TERPNING. Seven have won the Spur award from Western Writers of America: BUFFALO WAGONS, THE DAY THE COWBOYS QUIT, THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, EYES OF THE HAWK, SLAUGHTER, THE FAR CANYON and THE WAY OF THE COYOTE.

In the early days of the Texas panhandle, starting a new life is hard--but keeping it is even harder.

 

Espy Norwood is a troubleshooter who's got troubles of his own--and more troubles find him when he lands a job on a ranch on the Texas plains. Bitter landowners plot against him, determined cattle thieves sneak right under his nose, and his own son refuses to trust or even know him. Can he catch the thieves, save the ranch, and win his son's love?

Elmer Kelton

Titles are listed in order of first publication. Series numbers are indicated in red.

 

CLICK HERE FOR A PRINTABLE LIST OF ALL ELMER KELTON TITLES

The new Confederacy had too much on its hands to send troops to the Texas frontier to hold back the Indians, and authorized Texas to raise its own troops. Many men joined the Texas Mounted Rifles. Some were seeking adventure. Others wanted to protect their families against the murderous Comanche. And some were men who still loved the Union, like Scout Sam Houston Cloud….

Deputy Sheriff Jim-Bob McClain isn't sure he's ready to follow in his father's footsteps as the law in Coolridge County. In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But with tough Sheriff Mont Naylor to back him up he figures he can handle whatever comes his way.

 

Jim-Bob's first real assignment is no piece of cake. He must escort a ruthless outlaw into the hands of justice. All seems well with the lawless killer firmly in Jim-Bob's custody. But nothing prepares him for an angry mob, determined to take the law into their own hands and provide their own brand justice: a hangman's noose.

Texas Rifles

1960

Shadow Of A Star

1958

Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, young, hard-working cowboys from Fort Concho, Texas, have worked six months--at $20 a month--on the Devil’s River.  Their boss, a hawk-faced cow trader named Larramore, reneges on the money he owes the boys and sneaks out of the cow camp and heads for San Angelo. Fristo is tall and thin, his mind a hundred miles away; Quitman is short, bandy-legged, and "bedazzled by the flash of cards and the slosh of whiskey." The two are as different as sun and moon but are inseparable—and now they have a mission: find Larramore and extract the money he owes them.

In Bitter Trail, Kelton tells the story of a tough teamster named Frio Wheeler whose wagons haul cotton from Texas to Mexico. Sounds like a peaceable enterprise? The problem is that the Civil War is raging throughout the South and Wheeler's cotton is to be sold for gold--gold used to buy guns and ammunition for the Confederate army. And, added to his balky mules, the broiling heat, and killing drought of the Mexican dessert, Wheeler has even more serious matters to contend with: His wagons are attacked, his cotton bales are burned, he is captured and tortured by bandidos in league with Union sympathizers, and he is betrayed by his best friend--his former partner and brother of the woman he loves!

Pecos Crossing

1963

Bitter Trail

1962

For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it.

 

In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak is awe of a last great heard to the south--but no hunter who values his scalp dares ride south of the Cimarron and into Comanche territory. None but Gage Jameson....

Buffalo Wagons

1957

Winner of the Spur Award

Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry thugs.


Monahan's fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range baron of the huge R Cross spread.


With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann, assigned to the violent work, Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Doug Monahan.  And neither side takes prisoners!

Barbed Wire

1957

Donovan was supposed to be dead. The town of Dry Fork, southern Texas, had buried him years before when Uncle Joe Vickers had fired off both barrels of a shotgun into the vicious outlaw's face as he was escaping from jail. Now, Uncle Joe has been shot-in just the same way. And Judge Upshaw had found a noose hanging on his door. It looked as though Donovan was back-gunning for the people who had tracked him down and tried him. Sheriff Webb Matlock, a stern, quiet man, had more than one reason to find Donovan; Matlock was in love with the woman he had believed to be Donovan's widow; moreover, there were rumors that his hotheaded younger brother Sandy might have joined up with Donovan's gang. For his own peace of mind, and to protect the townspeople who had been threatened, Matlock decided to slip across the border, find Donovan in his Mexican hideout, and bring him back-or kill him.

Donovan

1961

When former cattle man Dundee wanders into the town of Titusville, he's broke, tired and itching for a fight. Instead, he gets a job offer...from none other than the top man in town, John Titus.

 

Titus recruits Dundee to find out who's rustling his extensive herd of cattle. But for Titus, it isn't enough that Dundee find the missing cattle. He wants to place the blame on a specific person...Blue Roan Hardesty, a one-time friend turned sworn enemy of the powerful Titus clan. All Titus needs is hard proof, and Dundee is just the man to get it.

What Dundee uncovers creates a shooting war out of a simmering feud...with him in the middle.

When Texan-born Josh Buckalew met Teresa, a young and beautiful Mexican woman, it was love at first sight. But with the Alamo recently sieged and destroyed, Josh knew this rosebud love would be unobtainable on account of the war thorns harrowing the country.

So the Buckalew brothers, Josh and Thomas, along with Josh's friend Muley, the man-child, come together with other Texans to protect their land at Goliad against the Mexicans who have just ravished the Alamo.

But what's at stake for Josh? Will he listen to his brother and become a war hero, eradicating Mexican control? Or will he follow his heart and take Teresa far, far away from all of the bloodshed?

Llano River

1966

Massacre At Goliad

1965

In 1875, nearly forty years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texans are still spilling blood over ownership of the Nueces Strip--a hot, dry stretch of coastal prairie that bushwackers and horse thieves have turned into a lawless hell. 

 

Captain L.H. McNelly, a complex and determined Confederate veteran, is brought into the Nueces Strip for one purpose: to keep the peace. His measures are harsh and controversial--but McNelly wasn't sent in to be popular.  In this boilerpot of killing and racial hatred, can any man bring lasting peace?

In the aftermath of a bitter and bloody war for independence, Texans have finally claimed their freedom from Mexico--but they don’t have much else to brag about. Joshua Buckalew has left behind the deserted battlefields that claimed his brother Thomas. The war has cost him much but it has also given him a strong bond to the land and to the Mexican families who stood with him against the tyrannies of Santa Anna. Josh is travelling with Ramon Hernandez his best friend and the man who had fought with him, side by side. Where they are going, he isn’t quite sure. His home is ashes--burned by either the retreating Texans or the advancing Mexican army—and the land is full of bandits and opportunists who would happily shoot Ramon simply because he is Mexican. Exiles in the land they had fought to liberate, Josh and Ramon struggle to rebuild their lives After the Bugles.

Captain's Rangers

1968

After the Bugles

1967

Rancher Blair Bishop of Two Forks, Texas, has too many enemies . . . and they are closing in on him. Macy Modock, whom Bishop sent to prison ten years ago, is out of the hoosegow.  Modock is returning to Two Forks along with his sidekick, who is known to be a mean gunman. Also arrayed against Bishop is rival cowman Clarence Cass, who is running his animals on Bishop’s land. Complicating matters, Cass’s daughter, Jessie, and Bishop’s son, Allan, are in love.

Macy Modock, determined to get even with the man who sent him to prison, schemes with Cass to ruin Bishop.  The black-hearted pair lay claim to untitled lands Bishop uses to graze his cattle – a plan that leads to a deadly confrontation in which two men will die.

In Hanging Judge, Justin Moffitt is eager to help keep the peace as a deputy marshal in small-town Texas. That is, until Justin is assigned to the wrong marshal-a "hanging judge" who is as famous for his ruthlessness as he is for his commitment to justice. When Justin's boss hangs a controversial criminal, Justin must defend himself against an army of friends and relatives, desperate for revenge.

Captain's Rangers

1969

Originally published as Shotgun Settlement under pseudonymn Alex Hawk

Hanging Judge

1969

Wagon boss Hugh Hitchcock knows the cowboy life better than most: In 1883 if you’re a cowboy, you can’t own a cow and you are stigmatized as a drunk. Worse, you are exploited by the wealthy cattle owners who fence the range, replace traditions and trust with written rules of employment, refuse to pay a livable wage, and change things “that ought to be left alone.” The cowboys working in the Canadian River country of the Texas Panhandle decide to fight back, to do the unthinkable: go on strike.In this celebrated novel, Elmer Kelton uses the true but little-known Canadian River incident to focus on the changes brought to ranching by big-money syndicates.

Daniel Provost is the son of a farmer. Living up to his father's high standards for the farm is very hard work, but his life is basically comfortable and a loving woman is waiting to become his wife.

When a well-traveled stranger, bearing a story of Jim Bowie's legendary silver mine, appears at the farm, Daniel might just throw away everything for the chance at adventure he thought had passed him by.

The Day the Cowboys Quit

1971

Winner of the Spur Award

Bowie's Mine

1971

Rio Seco was too small to afford a professional manager for its one-room Chamber of Commerce.And Rio Seco, meaning “dry river” in Spanish, symbolizes the biggest enemy of the ranchers and farmers in 1950s Texas, an enemy they can’t control: drought. To cranky Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a battle that he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable “assistance” of federal aid programs and their bureaucratic regulations, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again—if it ever rains again. Charlie Flagg, among the strongest of Elmer Kelton’s memorable creations, is no pasteboard hero. He is courageous and self-sufficient but as real as his harsh and unforgiving West Texas home country. His battle with an unfathomable foe is the stuff of epics and legends.

The life of a Texas cowboy is tough--especially if he is a black man like Isaac Jefford. Though he is the best at what he does, Isaac is careful not to step "over the line"--until his boss hires a vicious Southerner filled with a burning hatred. Now the time for crossing the line has come.

The Time It Never Rained

1973

Winner of the Western Heritage Award

Winner of the Spur Award

Wagontongue

1972

Lieutenant David Buckalew and his men had left Texas on a march westward to claim the entire Southwest for the Confederacy. But defeat after humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union army has stranded Buckalew and nineteen battle-weary survivors in the New Mexico Territory-a territory crawling with hostile Comanches and Union soldiers. As Buckalew and his men make a run for their homeland of Texas, they learn the location of a cache of Union weapons and ammunition. If they could seize the weapons before the Union troops arrive to collect them, they might be able to shift the odds in the South's favor. However, those keeping the cache for the North have other ideas . . .

Joe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his forty years of living on both sides of the Texas law-except face the hangman. Now, convicted of murder, Joe is about to get that privilege. But before he goes, Joe has a few things he wants to say-and a few stories that he wants to set straight.

Long Way To Texas

1976

 

Joe Pepper

1975

No one wants you to tamper with a legend, especially by telling the truth. So begins the story of a proud man named Thomas Canfield. He is descended from the earliest Texas pioneers and has inherited their courage and fortitude. To the Mexican citizens of Stonehill, Texas, he is “El Gavilán”—the Hawk—so called for the fire in his eyes, especially when confronted by the likes of Branch Isom. This insolent, dangerous newcomer intends to build his fortune at Canfield’s expense but underestimates his opponent. When a deadly feud ensues, the town of Stonehill heads toward a day of reckoning and the creation of a legend.

Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his West Texas home of 1906, the land of the way of life that he loves are changing too quickly for his taste. Hewey dreams of freedom--he wants only to be a footloose horseback cowboy, endlessly wandering the open range. But the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing: land is being parceled out, and barbed-wire fences are spring up all over. As if that weren't enough, cars and other machines are invading Hewey's simple cowboy life, stinking up the area and threatening to replace horse travel. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of "progress", he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is gone, that a man can't live a life whose time has passed, and that every choice he makes--even those that lead to happiness--requires a sacrifice.

Eyes of the Hawk

1981

Winner of the Spur Award

The Good Old Boys

1978

Hewey Calloway #1

Winner of the Western Heritage Award

A MOTION PICTURE STARRING TOMMY LEE JONES

 

The jarring strike of the clock in the towering cupola drew Frank Claymore's unwilling eyes to the two-story courthouse. Frank Claymore is not easy to like—to admire, maybe, but not to like. He is cantankerous, stubborn, and intolerant—the very qualities that make him a success as an open-range cattleman on the West Texas frontier. In one of his most memorable novels, acclaimed Western writer Elmer Kelton follows Frank Claymore’s life from the time of the Civil War to the dawn of the 20th century—through marriage, births, deaths, and a creeping change in the society that once hailed him as a hero, but which later has him condemned and tried for murder.

Gideon Ledbetter, freed from slavery, finds himself with no land, no money, and no means to make a living. He is drawn into the army, which had painted a deceptively alluring picture of cavalry life. Soon, Gideon becomes locked in a battle with a Comanche warrior, and a portrait emerges of two men who are merely pawns in a tragic conflict.

Stand Proud

1984

 

The Wolf and the Buffalo

1980

 

Aging cowboy and bronco-buster Wes Hendricks just wants to be left alone on his poor ranch, even when town developers offer him big money to sell it. Wes's grandson reluctantly tries to convince him to give up his home, but that was before he, too, succumbs to the ranch's--and a young cowgirl's--wild beauty.

Young Owen Danforth rides home to Texas as a wounded Confederate soldier, at a time when his home state is as savagely divided as his nation. As a grievously wounded America staggers toward the inevitable end of the Civil War, secessionist "home guards" and staunch Union loyalists fight their own bloody battles on a more local scale. For Owen, sick to death of fighting and yearning for peace and recuperation, his homecoming is bittersweet. And when his blood ties force him to choose a side in an unwinnable conflict, Owen begins to wonder if he will ever see peace in Texas again.

The Man Who Rode Midnight

1987

Winner of the Western Heritage Award

 

Dark Thicket

1985

 

Ten years have passed since Michael Lewis made his first venture into Texas, now a province of Mexico. Together with a small number of Americans pioneering on the Brazos and Colorado Rivers, Michael and his brother Andrew each have a plot of land assigned to them by the entrepreneur Stephen F. Austin. Michael Lewis has his fathers' wanderlust, Andrew is less footloose and excitable but the two act as one when trouble starts. To secure their places in their new-found lands in Texas, the Lewis boys have to fight not only Mexican authorities and hostile Indians, but their own kind - renegade white men attempting to settle on Texas land without permission or authority. In The Raiders: Sons of Texas, Elmer Kelton continues his saga of the Lewis family and the formative years of Texas, ending this mid-volume of the trilogy with the birth of Michael's daughter and the marriage of Andrew to Petra Moreno, a girl from Nacogdoches with whom he has fallen in love.

Mordecai Lewis and his sons Michael and Andrew ride into the Spanish province of Texas to hunt wild horses, planning to sell the animals back home in the Tennessee canebrakes. The expedition proves fatal for Mordecai and leaves the Lewis boys in peril on both sides of the border: with a murderous Spanish officer in Texas and a blood vendetta with the Blackwood clan, a neighboring Tennessee family.

The Raiders

1989

Sons of Texas #2

Originally published under pseudonym Tom Early

Sons of Texas

1989

Sons of Texas #1

Originally published under pseudonym Tom Early

 

Elmer Kelton's magnificent novel  of the wildcat West Texas oil boom of the 1920s.  It used to be that the worst crime in Caprock was  moonshining or lying about your Saturday night date  on Sunday morning--until someone struck oil. Now  the scent of the stuff has brought every dreamer,  drifter, and two-bit swindler to town. Among them  is the frontier mobster Big Boy Daugherty, who  warns any who'd stand in his way: Get Out or  Die. One man will do neither. Sheriff  Dave Buckalew is a man too proud to give up and  too stubborn to give in. He liked his town the way  it was--before the bootleggers, brothels, and  fortune-seeking roustabouts--and so did a lot of other  hardworking decent folk. Together they'll fight  to win back their town--and their future. This is  the story of their heroic stand.

It is the mid 1830s and a growing flow of American pioneers into Mexican Texas has sown the seeds of revolution. In the midst of the turmoil are the Lewis brothers – Andrew, Michael, and James – scions of Mordecai Lewis, who crossed the Sabine River into Texas a decade past. Now the news along the Texas frontier is of a young general, a self-styled "Napoleon of the West," named Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who wants to stamp out any gringo talk of independence from Mexico and oust the American interlopers from Texas. Standing in opposition to Santa Anna is the former governor of Tennessee and veteran of Andrew Jackson’s Indian battles, Sam Houston, who is gathering a volunteer army to meet the Mexican forces. Against the heroic, bloody backdrop of the Texas War of Independence--the battles of Gonzalez, San Antonio de Bexar, Goliad, the Alamo and San Jacinto--the Lewis men and their families join such rebels as Jim Bowie, James Fannin, Ben Milam, Juan Seguin, James Butler Bonham, William Barret Travis, and David Crockett, in wresting Texas from Mexican rule.

Honor At Daybreak

1991

 

The Rebels

1990

Sons of Texas #3

Originally published under pseudonym Tom Early

 

In The Far Canyon, Kelton masterfully unveils for his reader the finality of the buffalo’s demise, the beginning of a time when cattle would replace the American bison on the southern plains and ultimately end the Plains Indian culture. The novel reveals the history of the period, not in a general grand swoop of the pen, but rather, up close and personal, so his readership can judge the impact of the period upon his characters. The novel’s first chapter introduces Comanche warrior Crow Feather, whose situation is emblematic of a common recurring theme in all of Kelton’s works . . . change. Protagonist Jeff Layne is faced with the very same dramatic problem, the devastating threat to one’s self-concept inherent in change. Layne, the hide hunter from Slaughter is weary of killing and death. He decides to return to South Texas, determined to earn his living with the newest resource on the plains, cattle. And the cultures collide.

Although Crow Feather and his Comanche tribe rule the southern plains, Confederate veteran Jeff Layne and his party of desperate hide seekers, traveling from Dodge City, refuse to be turned back from their trek. Reprint.

The Far Canyon

1994

Winner of the Spur Award

 

Slaughter

1992

Winner of the Spur Award

 

 

In the cattle drives of the Old West, pumpkin rollers were green farmboys, almost more trouble than they were worth. When Trey McLean leaves his family's East Texas cotton farm and sets off on his own to learn the cattleman's trade, he's about as green as they come. But Trey learns fast. He learns about deceit when a con man cheats him out of his grubstake and about love when he meets the woman he's destined to marry. And when luck finally sets him on a cattle drive to Kansas, Trey learns the trade from veteran drover Ivan Kerbow, but he also learns the code of violence and death from outlaw Jarrett Longacre, a man who will plague his life at every turn.

As he flees to the sanctuary of Mexico, Chacho Fernandez is unaware of the fuel he has added to the already simmering racial hatreds in and around the quiet town of Domingo, Texas. Through events set in motion by a misunderstanding, Chacho becomes a folk hero to his people and a dangerous fugitive to a group of zealous lawmen. First published in 1974 by Ballantine Books, Manhunters, the tale of Chacho's legendary flight, was inspired by the story of controversial Mexican fugitive Gregorio Cortez. In 1901 Cortez, a young horseman, shot a sheriff during an argument, leading to the largest concerted manhunt in Texas history. This novel is alive with the idiom of Kelton's native West Texas and freely punctuated with his trademark wry humor. His characters, both the ignorantly petty as well as the quietly strong, ring true to life.

The Pumpkin Rollers

1996

 

Manhunters

1996 (Originally published in 1974)

 

 

Hewey Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that distracted his attention from matters of real importance. Elmer Kelton introduced Texas cowboy Hewey Calloway, one of the most beloved characters in Western fiction, almost thirty years ago in The Good Old Boys. The novel was transformed into a memorable 1995 TV film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek. Hewey returns in The Smiling Country.  It is 1910 and his freewheeling life is coming to an end—the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are creeping in even to remote Alpine, in the “smiling country” of West Texas. When he is badly injured trying to break a renegade horse, Hewey sees the loneliness that awaits him, and regrets his decision to run away from the only woman he has ever loved, the schoolteacher Spring Renfro.

In the Texas backlands in 1885, twelve-year-old Joey Shipman's father dies under mysterious circumstances, and the boy is forced to live with his stepmother and Blair Meacham, a hanger-on at the farm. After the death of a black farmhand and friend, and another "accident" that almost takes Joey's life, the boy runs away and joins forces with his only kin--Beau Shipman, a drunk and a jailbird. Beau, along with an outlaw, a San Antonio prostitute, and a sheepman, become Joey's unlikely partners as he is trailed by their murderous Meacham , in league with Joey's stepmother in their scheme to inherit the Shipman farm.

The Smiling Country

1996

Hewey Calloway #2

 

Cloudy in the West

1997

 

The Civil War is over and Texas is reluctantly yielding to the Union soldiers spreading across the state, even into the dangerous Comanche country. David "Rusty" Shannon, proud member of a "ranging company" attempting to protect Texas settlers from Indian depredations, finds that the rangers are being disbanded. He makes his way home to his land on the Red River, hoping to take up the life of a farmer and the hand of the beloved girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. But Geneva has married in Rusty's long absence and the country is filled with hostiles—not just Indians, but hate-filled Confederates, overbearing Union soldiers, and army renegades. Rusty's youth as a captive of the Comanches returns to haunt him when, in pursuit of Indian raiders, he takes as prisoner Badger Boy, a white child taken from his murdered parents by a Comanche warrior.

 

An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father.  Not long ago, Mike Shannon, was bushwhacked and killed, and his death still haunts Rusty. Rusty thinks he knows the identity of Mike’s killers.  But with Texas now in the throes of seceding from the Union, Rusty has his hands full fighting for the law in lawless Texas and for the life of the woman he loves. If that were not enough of a burden, Rusty is also heading for a showdown with the Comanche warrior who killed his family over twenty years ago.

Badger Boy

2001

Texas Rangers #2

 

The Buckskin Line

1999

Texas Rangers #1

 

In the spring of 1874 the Ranger companies that protect settlers against Indian raids and outlaw bands are being reorganized and David "Rusty" Shannon is the most sought-after veteran for reenlistment. But Shannon has new goals for his life: He is in love with Josie Monahan, daughter of the family that adopted him, and he intends to marry Josie and take her to his farm on the Colorado River. Rusty also feels affection and responsibility for Andy Pickard, a headstrong teenager he rescued from captivity among the Comanche--just as Rusty himself was rescued as a red-haired boy decades before. Then an unspeakable tragedy--the murder of his beloved Josie--changes Rusty's plans for a quiet farmer's life and alters his peace-loving character. Bent on revenge, he relentlessly trails Corey Bascom, son of an outlaw family and the man Rusty believes is Josie's killer. But the trail Rusty is following may be leading him to the wrong man. Set in the tumultuous Reconstruction period of Texas history, Ranger’s Trail continues Elmer Kelton's chronicles of the origins of the renowned Texas Rangers, told as fiction but historically accurate in every detail and written by a favorite son of Texas.

 

The Civil War has ended, and Union soldiers and federal officials have taken control of Texas as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. As a child he was a captive of the Comanche, as a young man a proud member of a ranging company protecting settlers from Indian raids. Shannon's fate is intertwined with the young man accompanying him: Andy Pickard, himself but recently rescued from Comanche captivity and known by his captors as Badger Boy. Texas is in turmoil, overrun with murderous outlaws, lawmen exacting penalties from suspected former Confederates, nightriders, and the ever-dangerous Comanche bands. In this tempestuous time and place, Rusty tries desperately to resume his prewar life. His friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by the Ku Klux Klan; his own homestead is confiscated by his special nemesis, the murderous Oldham brothers; and the son of a girl he once loved is kidnapped by Comanches. Elmer Kelton, a master of novelist of the American West, literature, has crafted a satisfying and remarkably accurate tale of Texas life at the end of the Civil War.

Ranger's Trail

2002

Texas Rangers #4

 

The Way of the Coyote

2001

Texas Rangers #3

Winner of the Spur Award

 

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