Elmer Kelton
2) Many a river
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The Barfield brothers are separated by a Comanche raid. Years later, they are destined to be reunited and discover how their separate lives have changed them.
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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. --
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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, 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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This is a story of the early days when...
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...
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Ranger Andy Pickard and his partner, Logan Daggett, are sent to central Texas to investigate a series of killings and cattle thefts. The two biggest cattlemen in the area blame each other for the violence, but it seems to Andy that neither man may be guilty. The case is complicated by the rise of a gang of "regulators" - masked vigilantes - and the arrival of a notorious hired gunman whose employer is unknown.
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Texas Rangers volume 3
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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...
10) Texas vendetta
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Texas Rangers volume 5
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In this fifth volume of his Texas Rangers series, Elmer Kelton takes the young ranger Andy Pickard, once a Comanche captive called Badger Boy, into the midst of a bloody vendetta between hate-filled families. Pickard and ranger Farley Brackett, a former Confederate soldier, are assigned to deliver prisoner Jayce Landon to the sheriff of a neighboring county to stand trial for killing a man named Ned Hopper but from the outset the seemingly simple...
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Nothing stirs up emotions in Texas like men stealing other men's horses. Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is assigned what seems to be a routine duty. West Texas horse trader Donley Bannister has killed a thug named Cletus Slocum who stole one of his horses. Ranger Pickard is to find and arrest Bannister, and bring him to trial. But the case turns out to be anything but routine. When Pickard finds him holed up with some cohorts, Bannister saves the Ranger's...
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The Smiling Country, filled with pathos and humor, is set in the last days of the Old West. Hewey Calloway may be pushing 45, but he can still rope and outride most things on four legs. Refusing promotions, he prefers to remain a simple ranch hand. But as he rides the west Texas plains, automobiles are beginning to dot the landscape. When Hewey is critically injured by a wild horse, he must admit that his world-and an age-are passing away.
13) Bitter trail
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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...
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Kelton presents two stories of his beloved West Texas, cowmen, and cow country in this 'OMNIBUS EDITION.' In 'Pecos Crossing, ' Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman have been cheated out of six-months' wages by their rancher boss and intend to get it. In 'Shotgun, ' rancher Blair Bishop has to contend with a rival cowman whose herd is encroaching on Blair's land, and a recently released ex-con who has a score to settle with Blair.
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In the cattle drives of the Old West, pumpkin rollers were green farm boys, 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...
16) Ranger's trail
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Texas Rangers volume 4
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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...
18) Sons of Texas
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Sons of Texas trilog volume 1
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In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee.
Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters...
19) Joe Pepper
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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.
With Joe Pepper, legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton tells a fine and moving tale of the history of...
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To Elmer Kelton, the brush country of southwest Texas is home. Nobody knows Texas's history, people, beauty, and dangers as well as this greatest of Western writers.
Barbed Wire, the first novel in this omnibus, is the story of one-time cowboy Doug Monahan, who runs a fencing crew outside the town of Twin Wells. Monahan, a likeable, hard-working Irishman, and his workers dig post-holes and string red painted barbwire for ranchers as protection against...