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.

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.

The Big Bend of Texas is a mysterious place in 1869. Legend has it that there's a lost gold mine in the Chisos Mountains. Twelve-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid have heard all about it. But when they discover a dying Indian in the desert, they have reason to believe it. Suddenly the boys find themselves with a great secret. No one else knows the way to the last Chisos mines-but do they dare? To find it, they must cross a desert prowled by Apache warriors. They must ride a trail haunted by devil animals and Indian spooks. Even with the help of a young Apache boy, the journey won't be easy. And what will they do if they succeed?

Eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings has always wanted to be a cowboy. Now, in the spring of 1868, he has his chance. His uncle is driving a cattle herd across Texas, and Fish is going with him as far as Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. Little does Fish know that he is saddling up for the wildest rides of his life. With his cousin Gid, Fish is about to face mean broncs, angry longhorns, and a dozen cowboys ready to play pranks. The days ahead will be filled with sandstorms and stampedes, lightning and twisters. It's the roughest stretch of cattle trail in Texas, and it will either make a cowhand out of a boy or break him.

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.

In his newest book, "Devils River, " Patrick Dearen traces the 400-year history of the notorious river from the time of the first Spanish explorers to the modernization of southwestern Texas and the coming of the railroad. He vividly retells stories of Indian encounters, train robberies, and other horrific events that prove just how the name "Devils River" was coined. With his inimitable style, the author weaves together a variety of themes--military events, including the Civil War and stories about the Texas Rangers; the development of the first mail lines; and the introduction of cattle and sheep raising--into a comprehensive account of the violence and bloodshed surrounding the Devils River. The nature of the river's history is such that very few anecdotes have happy endings, but "Devils River" contains stories of triumphs as well as disasters. Although this is an excellent account for historians studying the west, it is also very accessible to others with little or no background in early western 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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