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Tom Rowden has been riding away from the Pecos River for twenty
years, plagued by the haunting image of his wife, Sarah, the second
before he killed her. Now, he is dead-set on returning to her
unmarked grave above the river to make one final atonement. His
journey is interrupted when a group of Mexican bandits burn down
the 7L's ranch house, kill the ranch boss, and rape and abduct his
daughter, Liz Anne. The 7L's greenhorn wagon boss, Jess Graham,
desperately begs for Tom's help in rescuing Liz Anne, the girl Jess
loves. Tom obliges and sets out with Jess and his posse of ranch
hands through a hellish desert landscape toward the Pecos River.
For Jess, it is his first journey through the desert; Tom hopes it
is his last.
The journey slowly wears down the group of cowboys, who must face
deadly foes, choking dust clouds, and rabid wolf attacks. To stay
alive, they also must fight against personal desires and a growing
sense of hopelessness, but the most deadly enemy remains the
scorching desert, threatening to erase life at any second.
Liz Anne, meanwhile, must also fight on through the desert,
holding on to what dignity she has left, trying to slow down her
captors long enough for her rescue party to catch up. Her captors
reach the pools hidden in a canyon just a few miles away from the
Pecos River and set an ambush for the rescuers. Will the posse be
killed by the ambush? Will Jess ever get back his precious Liz
Anne? Will Tom be able to make it the last few miles to the Pecos
River and find absolution? Discover all the answers in Patrick
Dearen's exciting new tale, "To Hell or the Pecos."
Will Brite is a Slash Five cowboy working in the Middle Concho
region of Texas in the winter of 1884 when a blizzard descends upon
him--the likes of which he has never seen. Trapped under his horse
and entangled in a barbed wire fence, Will finds an unexpected (and
unwelcome) savior in the form of Zeke Boles, a former slave on the
run from a bloody, guilt-filled past.
In Zeke's dark features Will sees a reflection of the haunting
memories he has been trying to escape for so long, but he
reluctantly offers him shelter for the night at the Slash Five
camp. Little does he know that their lives will be inexorably
linked in the spring of '85 through what will be one of the most
brutal roundups of the nineteenth century.
Follow Will, Zeke, and the rest of the Slash Fives as they ride
through West Texas in search of stray cattle in an unforgettable
tale of love, redemption, and true grit.
Rising at 11,750 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range and snaking 926
miles through New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande, the Pecos
River is one of the most storied waterways in the American West. It
is also one of the most troubled. In 1942, the National Resources
Planning Board observed that the Pecos River basin ""probably
presents a greater aggregation of problems associated with land and
water use than any other irrigated basin in the Western U.S."" In
the twenty-first century, the river's problems have only
multiplied. Bitter Waters, the first book-length study of the
entire Pecos, traces the river's environmental history from the
arrival of the first Europeans in the sixteenth century to today.
Running clear at its source and turning salty in its middle reach,
the Pecos River has served as both a magnet of veneration and an
object of scorn. Patrick Dearen, who has written about the Pecos
since the 1980s, draws on more than 150 interviews and a wealth of
primary sources to trace the river's natural evolution and man's
interaction with it. Irrigation projects, dams, invasive saltcedar,
forest proliferation, fires, floods, flow decline, usage conflicts,
water quality deterioration - Dearen offers a thorough and clearly
written account of what each factor has meant to the river and its
prospects. As fine-grained in detail as it is sweeping in breadth,
the picture Bitter Waters presents is sobering but not without
hope, as it also extends to potential solutions to the Pecos
River's problems and the current efforts to undo decades of damage.
Combining the research skills of an accomplished historian, the
investigative techniques of a veteran journalist, and the engaging
style of an award-winning novelist, this powerful and accessible
work of environmental history may well mark a turning point in the
Pecos's fortunes.
By the winner of the Spur Award of Western Writers of America It's
1917, and the Mexican Revolution has the Big Bend of Texas aflame.
But the firestorm is no greater than the one inside newspaper
reporter Jack Landon. Disillusioned, he flees down the road to
nowhere and finds himself in Esperanza. Populated by people of
Mexican heritage, the small village on the Texas bank of the Rio
Grande is a target of Texas Rangers Company B, which unjustly
considers it a bandit den. Jack befriends a teenaged boy and his
adult sister, Mary, who teaches in the Esperanza school. As Jack
assimilates to life in Esperanza, the threat of Rangers looms
large. Eventually a day of reckoning descends, and it envelops Jack
and Mary and the entire village. This novel is based on what
actually happened at Porvenir, Texas, on January 28, 1918 -- the
darkest moment in Texas Rangers history.
It's 1867 and eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin are
headed across Texas on a wagon train. But the trail is full of
danger. A Comanche war party is on the prowl, looking for horses
and scalps. Among the Indians is eleven year old Hunting Bear, who
is riding his first war trail. Before the journey is over, he must
prove himself worthy to be a warrior. Fish has been taught to hate
Comanches. Hunting Bear has been taught to hate white men. But all
of that changes when the two boys come face to face and become
friends. Suddenly the lives of their peoples rest on the boys'
shoulders. The Comanches have sworn to attack the wagon train. The
white men have vowed to fight back and track down the warriors.
Soon there will be bloodshed, and only Fish and Hunting Bear have a
chance to stop it. But will they find a way?
It was 1932, the depths of the Great Depression, and thousands of
desperate people rode the rails in search of jobs, homes, and hope.
For some, the track was a road to nowhere, a dead end in a boxcar
or under the wheels or in a sea of emptiness. Their fate seemed
certain ? until Ish Watson grabbed the rungs of a passing freight
train bound for a dying relative on the Texas Gulf Coast
Fourteen-year-old Josh and his friend Shan are facing hard times on
their families? farms in Central Texas in 1934. It's the days of
the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, and rain is as scarce as money.
With the long dry spell have come wild animals with flashing teeth
and deadly rabies. Dust storms known a black blizzards are raging,
threatening lives and destroying crop land. Will a rainmaker bring
rain? Will their families lose their homes? Will Josh's and Shan's
friendship survive? From rabid animals attacks to a deadly flood to
a barreling freight train, Josh is in for an adventure he will
never forget. ?Provides a wonderful and useful tool for teachers
and parents, as well as brings great enjoyment to all readers young
and old? Carol Mangan, fifth grade teacher, Midland, Texas
Owned/controlled more than 1 million acres in West Texas
A man either chases his dreams, or he dies. Present-day ranch hand
Charlie Lyles longs for an era before mechanization, when a
cowboy's greatest ally was his horse. He remembers stories of
cattle drives and stampedes and shallow graves in lonesome country.
Society has pushed Charlie toward a conformity that he hates, but
he is about to change the rules. At a remote line shack in West
Texas, he steals a horse, leaving a perfectly good pickup behind.
His theft leads to a manhunt with a helicopter and assault weapons,
but his trackers are headed into territory that hasn't changed in a
century . . . and they are trailing a man born a hundred years too
late. A Spur Award finalist, When Cowboys Die has been acclaimed as
"spellbinding" and "an instant classic." This new volume, the first
print edition in twenty-five years, includes a preface and "Requiem
for a Cowboy," a documented account of the 1976 Texas manhunt that
inspired the novel.
In the late 1800s when the words of a dying Indian lead twelve-year-old Fish and his step-brother into the Chisos Mountains in search of a lost gold mine, they face many dangers, including a band of Apache warriors, one of whom turns out to be a trusted friend.
Working cowboys live on as genuine legends who rode through a
golden moment in American history. In the 1980s historian/ author
Patrick Dearen went looking for the last of these fading icons.
The trail took him to dozens of onetime cowhands in their 80s, 90s,
and even 100s whose aged eyes lit up and voices seemed young again
as they spoke of their experiences on the trail. From these
honest-to-goodness cowhands he collected priceless, spellbinding
true stories of the incredible hardships of braving the elements,
dealing with stampedes and runaways, and good-natured hoorawing
with their companions.
These stories bear the unmistakable brand of an Old West that is
now but a dusty grave on a long-lost trail. Dearen chronicles the
tales and introduces the cowboys who tell them, with tender respect
and love.
Every time a cowhand dug his boot into the stirrup, he knew that
this ride could carry him to trail's end. In real stories told by
genuine cowboys, this book captures the everyday perils of the
"flinty hoofs and devil horns of an outlaw steer, the crush of a
half-ton of fury in the guise of a saddle horse, the snap of a rope
pulled taut enough to sever digits. Threats took many forms, all of
them sudden, most inescapable-a whooshing arrow or exploding slug,
a raging river ready to drag him to the depths, and lightning that
rattled bones and deafened if it missed, or came with silent
finality if it didn't." Whether destined to be remembered or
forgotten, a cowhand clung to life with all the zeal with which he
approached his trade. He was the most loyal of employees,
repeatedly putting his neck on the line for a mere dollar a day.
Patrick Dearen has brought these reckless and risky adventures to
life with colorful stories from interviews with 76 men who cowboyed
in the West before 1932 as well as 150 archival interviews and
written accounts from as early as the 1870s and well into the
mid-twentieth century.
First published in 1988, Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier was
acclaimed by reviewers as "superb," "significant," and "utterly
delightful." In this revised edition, Patrick Dearen draws upon the
latest in scholarship to update his study of the Pecos River
country of West Texas. It's a land wild with tales that blend
history, geography, and folklore, and from his search emerge six
fascinating accounts: Castle Gap, a break in a mesa twelve miles
east of the Pecos River, used by Comanches, emigrants, stage
drivers, and cattle drovers; Horsehead Crossing, the most infamous
ford of the Old West; Juan Cordona Lake, a salt lake where
sandstorms and skull-baking sun defied early efforts to mine salt
vital to survival; The "bulto" or ghost who wanders the Fort
Stockton night; Lost Wagon Train, a forty-wagon caravan buried in
the sands; The lost mine of Will Sublett, who found gold and kept
its location secret unto death. Although linked by the search for
treasure, the stories are as varied as the land itself. They speak
eloquently of the Pecos country, its heritage, and its people.
In the late 1880s, the Pecos River region of Texas and southern New
Mexico was known as "the cowboy's paradise." And the cowboys who
worked in and around the river were known as "the most expert
cowboys in the world." A Cowboy of the Pecos vividly reveals tells
the story of the Pecos cowboy from the first Goodnight-Loving
cattle drive to the 1920s. These meticulously researched and
entertaining stories offer a glimpse into a forgotten and yet
mythologized era. Includes archival photographs.
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