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...

Aging Texas gunfighter Joe Pepper reminisces about his life of adventure throughout the Old Southwest while preparing to face the hangman's noose.

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...

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.... At the Publisher's request, this title is being...

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...

When Macy Modock gets out of prison, he vows to get even with rancher Blair Bishop, the man who sent him up the river.

Retired ranger David Shannon is being asked to reenlist in the company to help protect settlers against Indian raids, but David has other plans in mind, including marriage and a family, but when an unspeakable tragedy changes David's plans, he joins the Rangers in search of revenge.

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 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...

An action-packed collection of stories of the old West, Law of the Land includes the never-before-published "Biscuits for a Bandit." Sixteen stories, where good meets bad, and everything in between, from the legendary author of the west, Elmer Kelton. The Law of the Land chronicles some of his most exciting and dangerous tales of the old west, collected together for the first time.