Two orphans face starvation on the prairie of northeastern Kansas during the terrible winter of 1885-86. Dell and Joel Wells, redheads who have barely reached shaving age, are about to abandon their dead father's claim on Beaver Creek because it won't grow crops. Then unexpected events, and a drover seeking aid, allow them a decent chance in life.

First published in 1911, "Wells" "Brothers, The Young Cattle Kings" shows what happens when experienced enterprise meets youthful energy. The boys develop their own ranch on the Beaver, without capital but with honor. No amount of savvy can entirely prepare them for the risks: cruel winters, rapacious wolf packs, summer droughts, mysterious Texas fever, the shifting circumstances of the cattle trade. Andy Adams (1859-1935), author of the classic "Log of a Cowboy" (also available as a Bison Book), wraps the saga of the Wells brothers in authentic western atmosphere and lore.

Herding cattle from horseback has been a tradition in northern Mexico and the American West since the Spanish colonial era. The first mounted herders were the Mexican vaqueros, expert horsemen who developed the skills to work cattle in the brush country and deserts of the Southwestern borderlands. From them, Texas cowboys learned the trade, evolving their own unique culture that spread across the Southwest and Great Plains. The buckaroos of the Great Basin west of the Rockies trace their origin to the vaqueros, with influence along the way from the cowboys, though they, too, have ways and customs distinctly their own.

In this book, three long-time students of the American West describe the history, working practices, and folk culture of vaqueros, cowboys, and buckaroos. They draw on historical records, contemporary interviews, and numerous photographs to show what makes each group of mounted herders distinctive in terms of working methods, gear, dress, customs, and speech. They also highlight the many common traits of all three groups.

This comparative look at vaqueros, cowboys, and buckaroos brings the mythical image of the American cowboy into focus and detail and honors the regional and national variations. It will be an essential resource for anyone who would know or portray the cowboy--readers, writers, songwriters, and actors among them.

Between the Nebraska border and Osage County, Oklahoma, are the Flint Hills of Kansas, and growing on those hills the last of the tallgrass prairie that once ranged from Canada to Texas, and on those fields of bluestem, cattle graze - and tending the cattle, someone like Jim Hoy, whose people have ranched there from, well, not quite time immemorial, but pretty darn close. Hoy has always called the Flint Hills home and over the decades he has made a study of them - their tough terrain and quiet beauty, their distinctive folk life and cattle culture - and marshaled his observations to bring the Flint Hills home to readers in a singular way. These essays are Hoy's Flint Hills, combining family lore and anecdotes of ranching life with reflections on the region's rich history and nature. Whether it's weaning calves or shoeing horses, checking in on a local legend or a night of high school basketball in nearby Cassoday, encountering a coyote or a badger or surveying what's happened to the tallgrass prairie over time, summoning cowboy traditions or parsing the place's plant life or rock formations, he has something to say - and you can bet it's well worth hearing. With his keen eye, understated wit, and store of knowledge, Hoy makes his Flint Hills come alive, and in the telling, live on.

In Cowboys and Kansas, Jim Hoy educates and entertains us with essays and tales about cowboy life that are based on personal experience, folklore, and history. Introduced to cowboys - famous and obscure, historical and contemporary - we hear them tell about troublesome horses they have ridden, rattlesnakes they have encountered, and outlaws they have met. We experience the details of the cowhand's daily work (roping, counting, and shipping cattle, riding with a trail herd) and play (rodeos, horse races, roping contests, poetry). We meet women drovers, Wild West show riders, and jockeys in a section on cowgirls, and we learn the history of cowboy boots, pants, hats, and saddles.

If it is true that a region is defined by its people and their culture, then Jim Hoy and Tom Isern have taken a second giant step in defining the Great Plains. Plains Folk II: The Romance of the Landscape continues that story. As in the first volume, Plains Folk: A Commonplace of the Great Plains, the authors write about hardy plains dwellers - a rare breed who feel out of place anywhere except on the prairie - and their cultural heritage, derived from many countries in both the Old World and the New. Here are stories about plains folklore, animals, food, lifestyles, and artifacts in a land of buttermilk and blabs, Bigfoot and bindweed. Sharing their experiences of the plains region, Hoy and Isern convey their sense of place and their affection for the area. They see beauty in landscapes that others, used to mountains or forests, deem barren. They look beyond the seemingly flat surface into the lives and culture of those who turned the Great American Desert into the Garden of the World.