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Summary
In later years people often asked Hugh Hitchcock about the Canadian River cowboy strike of 1883. 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...
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The Time It Never Rained helped convince the Western Writers of America to declare seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton the greatest Western writer of all time. Forged from Kelton's 1950s observations of drought-ravaged West Texas, this compelling novel tells the story of one rancher's struggle to maintain his independence despite the swirling winds of change. For decades, Charlie Flagg has eked out a living by raising cattle and sheep on his...
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Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his west Texas home of 1906, the land and way of life he loves are changing too quickly. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of progress, he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is vanishing - and that every choice he makes requires a sacrifice. --
Author
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Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family. A powerfully...
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This entry in Elmer Kelton's Tales of Texas series whisks us away to witness a violent 1875 conflict. Thirty years after the Battle of San Jacinto, Texans and Mexicans are still spilling blood over control of the Nueces Strip. And Horse thieves and bushwhackers transform this hot, dry stretch between the Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers into a lawless inferno. Despite long odds, Captain McNelly and his small band of Texas Rangers strive to bring lasting...
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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...
7) Morning star
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Driven from his home, a Rebel finds a place among the Cheyenne. Joel Ryan returns from the Civil War with grey hair and a weary heart, but he finds no rest in Kentucky. Turned away by a brother who still blames Joel for abandoning the family to fight for the Confederate cause, Joel rides west, searching for peace in the untamed wilderness of Montana. Instead, against all odds, he finds love. When he sees the gang of thugs tormenting the young Cheyenne...
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From one of the West's greatest living storytellers, winner of numerous awards, including the Spur, the Golden Saddleman, and the Western Heritage Award, here is Elmer Kelton's magnificent new 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,...
9) Hot iron
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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?...
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In Loren D. Estleman's Journey of the Dead, when Pat Garrett killed his poker buddy, Billy the Kid, he had no idea what a terrible emotional price he would pay. Haunted by memories of Billy, Garrett wanders the New Mexico desert in a fruitless pursuit of peace.
Deep in the same desert, an ancient Spanish alchemist searches for the fabled philosopher's stone. Resolutely alone in his quest he devotes his long life to hunting the secrets of the old...
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WHERE THE LIVING IS HARD AND THE KILLING IS EASY... It's in the lawless Indian Territory that Daniel Strange meets his demise. Riding his chestnut mare to Texas to buy himself some cattle, the best gunsmith in St. Joseph, Missouri, gets waylaid by a pack of murdering outlaws. His lifeless body is left dangling at the end of a rope -- robbing his family of a loving husband and father. ...DEATH CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN Now, a mysterious gunslinger...
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Best-selling author Nancy Bell adds to a delightful Lone Star series that began with a People Pick of the Week. A victim of foul play, Firman Birdsong spends the Grand Opening of the Birdsong brothers' chicken restaurant dead under a table-with his gravy-covered, parsley-garnished body and his tomato-stuffed mouth. Biggie and her 10-year-old grandson JR investigate the murder. But as the suspect list swells, JR believes Biggie cares more about detecting...
13) Dakota
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Teddy Roosevelt's wife and mother died on the same night in his home in New York City. To outdistance his grief, he turned his back on a promising political career and fled to the badlands to restore his spirit through a thrilling adventure in the Wild West.
14) Dead man's bones
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When China's teenage son finds some skeletal remains during a local cave dig, remains that show a not-so-accidental death, it's a disturbing development. But China doesn't let it distract her from the opening of the new community theater donated by the elderly Obermann sisters. Unfortunately, the haughty, bullying Jane Obermann, and her frail, frightened younger sister made the donation with a condition: that the first production be a play written...
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Smoke Jensen was once the fastest draw in the West. He was also tired of taking on every tinhorn upstart out to make a reputation. So Jensen hung up his .45s for good--or so he thought. Called to Texas, Jensen must help rancher Richard King face an insane former Union captain who intends to burn the King ranch to the ground.
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Sheriff Cray Dawson's quick-draw reputation keeps most criminals away from his Texas town of Somos Santos. But it doesn't keep the motley Walker Gang away for long. Although they temporarily divert their bankrobbing plans to a neighboring town, they soon stumble on a way to weaken him. But will a strategic kidnapping and an unexpected ally undermine Dawson's resolve to do what he must?
17) New mercies
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Sandra Dallas, best-selling author of The Persian Pickle Club, weaves an intricate and sophisticated tale in New Mercies. Nora Bondurant is divorced-unfathomable for a woman in 1933-and has inherited a house from a dead aunt she never even knew existed. But when she travels to Mississippi to claim her inheritance, she finds her eccentric neighbors would rather help her acquire a new husband than reveal the secrets surrounding her aunt's death.
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The lone survivor of a deadly fever, Shannon is taken in by Kiowa Chief Seccoro as a child. But when the warrior chief is killed, Shannon knows he cannot return to the jealous tribe. He is soon adopted by a rich rancher--into another world where he doesn't fit. But Shannon has not forgotten Seccoro's promise that the land of Ghost Canyon would one day be his. And nothing will stand in this rogue warrior's way.
19) Six bits a day
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Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country.
The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits-75 cents-a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching...
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Johnny Vermillion's theater troupe brings masterpieces to the Wild West. The four actors are versatile enough to wear many costumes and play many roles. A few props, a little makeup, a costume and-voilà-applause on the rugged frontier.
Johnny also arranges a special attraction for each town. While his actors bustle in and out of costumes, on and off the stage in many roles, one plays the villain in the bank. Then the actors take their curtain...
