Elmer Kelton

"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...

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...

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 his...

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...

When a rivalry between a white rancher and a Mexican cattle baron escalates to deadly levels, young Texas Ranger Andy Pickard teams up with former Confederate soldier Farley Brackett to prevent a violent showdown.

"Hewey Calloway dreams of freedom. He wants to be a footloose horseback cowboy, endless wandering the open range. But the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing. 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...

Having finished Texas Standoff, seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton-the Western Writers of America's "Best Western Writer of All Time"-took his leave with 50 notches on his gunbelt of classics. When Ranger Andy Pickard is sent to central Texas to investigate a series of killings and cattle thefts, two prominent cattlemen are prime suspects. But the rise of a gang of masked vigilantes and the arrival of a notorious hired gunman complicate matters....

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...

It's been 15 years since brothers Michael and Andrew Lewis came from Tennessee to Mexican-run Texas to hunt wild horses. They have settled and found wives, and they're now joined by their brother and sister, James and Annie. James becomes a volunteer in a fledgling army of rebels led by Sam Houston. Michael and Andrew are separated from their families and each other, being drawn into the conflict as the drive toward independence from the government...

In the mid-1830s, the Lewis brothers-- Andrew, Michael, and James-- the sons of Mordecai Lewis, become caught up in the fierce battle for Texas independence from Mexico.