Hard Trail to Follow is the seventh novel in Elmer Kelton's acclaimed "Texas Ranger" series from Elmer Kelton Former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, called "Badger Boy" when he lived with Comanches as a child, is following the plow on West Texas land until he learns that his friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing, has been killed during a jailbreak. The escaped bank robbers are led by a man calling himself Cordell. Andy gets reinstated as a Ranger so he can catch...

Donovan: 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...

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.

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...

The Civil War is over and Confederate Texas is reluctantly yielding to Union military peace-keepers and regulations imposed by Washington. David "Rusty" Shannon is the member of a "ranging company" attempting to protect Texas settlers from Comanche depredations. He learns that the rangers are being disbanded. He makes his way home to his farm on the Colorado River, and discovers that the land around his home is filled with hostiles Indians, Confederates,...

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

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...

In post-Civil War Texas, Andy Pickard, once known to his Comanche "family" as Badger Boy, is now in his mid-twenties and riding with the Texas Rangers. While delivering a prisoner for trial, he becomes entangled in a feud between the Landon and Hopper families. Andy works to help Jayce Landon, while at the same time keeping the boy Scooter Tennyson from being pulled into a life of crime. Lives are at stake, loyalties tested, and the worst aspects...

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.

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,...