Elmer Kelton

In "Barbed Wire, " former cowboy and Irish fencing master Doug Monahan is unwittingly drawn into a barbed wire war, and in "Llano River, " Dundee works to stop a cattle-rustling operation and gets caught in the middle of a deadly feud.

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...

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...

Deputy Sheriff Jim-Bob McClain isn't sure he's ready to follow in his father's footsteps as the law in Coolridge County. In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But with tough Sheriff Mont Naylor to back him up he figures he can handle whatever comes his way. Jim-Bob's first real assignment is no piece of cake. He must escort a ruthless outlaw into the hands of justice. All seems well with the lawless...

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

After learning of the defeat at the Alamo, the Buckalew brothers and the rest of the garrison at Goliad are determined to defeat Santa Anna.

Rancher Blair Bishop of Two Forks, Texas, has too many enemies...and they are closing in on him. Macy Modock, whom Bishop sent to prison ten years ago, is out of the hoosegow. Modock is returning to Two Forks along with his sidekick, who is known to be a mean gunman. Also arrayed against Bishop is rival cowman Clarence Cass, who is running his animals on Bishop's land. Complicating matters, Cass's daughter, Jessie, and Bishop's son, Allan, are in...

The new Confederacy, facing into the Union cannon, had too much on its hands to send troops to the Texas frontier to hold back the Indians. Instead, it authorized the State of Texas to raise its own troops. Many kinds of men drifted into the Texas Mounted Rifles. Some thought it might be safer than fighting in far off Virginia. Many were merely young men a-thirst for adventure. Some were settlers who saw this as the best way to protect their families...

Written by the most honored Western writer of all time, Ranger's Law presents three novels from Elmer Kelton's acclaimed saga of the formative years of the Texas Rangers. In Ranger's Trail, set in the decade following the Civil War, young David "Rusty" Shannon hopes to join the "ranging companies" being formed to curb depredations by Indian bands and renegade outlaws. Waiting will give him time to find and kill the man who murdered his fiancée -...

Lieutenant David Buckalew and his men had left Texas on a march westward to claim the entire Southwest for the Confederacy. But defeat after humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union army has stranded Buckalew and nineteen battle-weary survivors in the New Mexico Territory-a territory crawling with hostile Comanches and Union soldiers. As Buckalew and his men make a run for their homeland of Texas, they learn the location of a cache of Union weapons...