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The
Last Indian Fight in Kerr
County
By
Elmer Kelton
Matthew Wayland and his young
wife Rachal have settled on a small farm in Kerr County, Texas.
While breaking the ground for his new wheat field, Matthew
senses a Comanche attack and makes a fast track for home to
protect his wife and defend their land.
All profits from the sale of this story will benefit the
ReadWest Foundation,
Inc.
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COMING SEPTEMBER 2011
Long Way to
Texas: Three Novels
By
Elmer Kelton
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Death, when it finally
came, would be savage and swift. But the waiting seemed
eternal. For more than two hours Lieutenant David
Buckalew had huddled with his nineteen tired and ragged
men in this vulnerable hilltop redoubt and had wondered
when the Indians would come shrieking up that barren
slope to take them.
What in the hell were they
waiting for? |
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Texas Standoff
By
Elmer Kelton |
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Texas Standoff, Ranger Andy Pickard and his partner,
Logan Daggett, are sent to central Texas to investigate
a series of killings and cattle thefts. The two biggest
cattlemen in the area blame each other for the violence,
but it seems to Andy that neither man may be guilty. The
case is complicated by the rise of a gang of
"regulators"-masked vigilantes-and the arrival of a
notorious hired gunman whose employer is unknown. The
murder of a captured regulator and a standoff in the
county jail wind up bringing to justice the men
responsible for the killings and thievery. Among the
culprits is a man whose guilt no one would have guessed,
and among the ironies of the case is a telegram to the
Rangers from the State of Texas notifying them that
their services are no long required. |
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Many of Elmer Kelton's titles
are now available on Amazon's Kindle reader. Click on the
Kindle link of the desired title to order the Kindle Edition.
To order your own electronic
Kindle reader, click on the image to the left. Free Kindle
readers are also available for your computer or smart phone.
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Texas Sunrise
By
Elmer Kelton
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In Texas Sunrise,
Elmer Kelton brings together two novels that tell the story of
the Texas Revolution as seen by the brothers Thomas and Joshua
Buckalew who emigrate to Texas at a time when the
Mexican-controlled province welcomes settlers.
In Massacre at
Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American
newcomers, and revolution is in the air, something Thomas
Buckalew welcomes but Joshua fears – he is in love with a
Mexican girl.
The story touches on
the immortal battle of the Alamo, but centers on the infamous
Goliad massacre, and ultimately the decisive battle of San
Jacinto, which made Texas an independent republic.
After the Bugles
continues where Massacre at Goliad ends – on the battlefield at
San Jacinto. Joshua Buckalew tries to put the pieces back
together but finds that starting over in the aftermath of war
can be as challenging as the war itself. The racial differences
that helped foment the conflict have not gone away. And Texas
finds that being an independent republic can be more difficult
than being a colonial extension of Mexico.
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Other Men's Horses
(Texas Rangers Series #8)
By
Elmer Kelton |
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Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is
assigned what appears to be a routine duty. Donley Bannister, a
West Texas horse trader, has killed a thug named Cletus Slocum,
who stole one of Bannister's horses. Ranger Pickard is ordered
to find and arrest Bannister and bring him to trial.
The Bannister case turns out to be
anything but routine. Pickard picks up Bannister's trail and
finds him holed up with some cohorts who wound and vow to kill
the young Ranger. Ironically, Bannister saves Pickard's life by
fending off the would-be killers and taking Andy to a cow camp
where his injury can be treated. When he is able to ride, Andy
locates and trails Geneva Bannister, Donley's young wife, hoping
she will lead him to the wanted man. The trail takes unexpected
turns and detours: Near Fort Concho Andy's mission is
interrupted by an ugly racial incident in which a black soldier
is killed; Bannister is shot by outlaw Curly Tadlock and left
for dead; and Tadlock brutally assaults Geneva.
Andy Pickard, newly married, still
unsure of himself and his choice of Rangering as a career, must
unravel this tangled series of events and accomplish his mission
of bringing an accused killer to justice. |
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SHOTGUN
Publisher: Forge Books
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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 love.
Macy Modock, determined to get even with the man who
sent him to prison, schemes with Cass to ruin Bishop.
The black-hearted pair lay claim to untitled lands
Bishop uses to graze his cattle – a plan that leads to a
deadly confrontation in which two men will die.
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Many a River
Publisher: Forge Books (June, 2008)
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The Barfield family,
Arkansas sharecroppers, are heading west with their sons Jeffrey and Todd.
In far West Texas their camp is attacked by Comanche raiders and the elder
Barfields are killed and scalped. The younger boy, Todd, is taken captive
by the Indians. The older son, Jeffrey, manages to hide and is rescued by
the militia men. Jeffrey is taken in by a home-steading family,
while Todd is sold, for a rifle and gunpowder, to a Comanchero trader
named January.
Both become caught
up in the turbulence of the Civil War, which even in remote West Texas,
the border country with New Mexico, pits Confederate sympathizers against
Unionists. The brothers, separated by violence, are destined to be
rejoined by violence. Will they meet as friends or deadly enemies?
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HARD TRAIL TO FOLLOW
Publisher: Forge Books (January 8, 2008)
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this, the seventh novel in Kelton's acclaimed Texas Ranger series, former
Texas Ranger Andy Pickard ("Badger Boy" as he was known as a youth living
among Comanches), leaves his fiancée's farm in north central Texas. He
begins to track the man, Luther Cordell, who he believes killed his friend,
Sheriff Tom Blessing. Pickard is mistaken. But although Cordell did not
kill Blessing, the robber-ringleader must be brought to Ranger justice and
the rest sorted out later. |
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THE REBELS
Publisher: Forge Books (November 13, 2007)
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It is the
mid 1830s and a growing flow of American pioneers into Mexican Texas has
sown the seeds of revolution. In the midst of the turmoil are the Lewis
brothers – Andrew, Michael, and James – scions of Mordecai Lewis, who
crossed the Sabine River into Texas
a decade past.
Now the news along the Texas frontier is
of a young general, a self-styled "Napoleon of the West," named
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who wants to stamp out any gringo talk
of independence from Mexico
and oust the American interlopers from Texas.
Standing in opposition to Santa Anna is the former governor of
Tennessee and
veteran of Andrew Jackson’s Indian battles, Sam Houston, who is gathering a
volunteer army to meet the Mexican forces.
Against the heroic, bloody backdrop of the Texas War of Independence--the
battles of Gonzalez, San Antonio de Bexar, Goliad, the Alamo and San
Jacinto--the Lewis men and their families join such rebels as Jim Bowie,
James Fannin, Ben Milam, Juan Seguin,
James Butler Bonham, William Barret Travis, and
David Crockett, in wresting Texas
from Mexican rule.
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SANDHILLS BOY
Publisher: Forge Books (May 15, 2007)
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Sandhills Boy is Kelton’s
memoir, a funny and poignant story of “a
freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd, a sheep ready to be sheared,”
growing up in the wild, dry, sandhills of West Texas. The son of a working cowboy and ranch
foreman, Elmer was expected to follow in father's footsteps but learned at
an early age that he had no talents in the cowboy’s trade. Buck Kelton
called Elmer “Pop,” said he was “slow as the seven-year itch,” and
reluctantly supported his son’s decision to become a student at the University of
Texas, and, eventually, a journalist
and writer.
Kelton’s life in ranch and oil patch
Texas during the
Great Depression is told with warm nostalgic humor animated with stories of
the cowboys and their wives and kids who gave the time and place its
special flavor. He writes with great feeling of his service in WW2 in France, Germany,
and Czechoslovakia, and
the romantic circumstances in which his life changed in the
village of Ebensee, Austria.
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TEXAS SHOWDOWN
Publisher: Forge Books (March 20, 2007)
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Elmer Kelton writes of
his beloved home country of West Texas in
these two novels of cowmen and cow country. In Pecos Crossing,
two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck
Quitman, have been cheated of six months hard-earned salary by their
rancher boss Larramore and intend to get what is
due to them.
In Shotgun,
rancher Blair Bishop has to contend with a rival cowman who is turning his
herd loose on Bishops
land, and with a mean
customer named Macy Modock, who Bishop sent to
prison ten years past. Modock is out of the
hoosegow and has returned to Two Forks, determined to get even with the man
who sent him up the river.
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BRUSH COUNTRY: TWO TEXAS
NOVELS
Forge Books (January 24, 2006)
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In Barbed Wire, the first novel in this
Kelton omnibus, Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south
Texas town of Twin Wells. The onetime cowboy has found
work digging post-holes and stringing barbed wire for ranchers as
protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land-hungry thugs. Monahans fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew
Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range baron
of the huge R Cross spread. With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann, assigned
the violent work, Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Doug Monahan.
The second colorful tale of the brush country of south
Texas is
Llano
River.
Dundee, a onetime cowboy (one of Monahans fencing
crew in Barbed Wire) wanders into the town of Titusville broke, tired, and itching for
a fight. He takes a job from town patriarch John Titus to find out who is
rustling Tituss cattle but learns there is more
to the job than detective work. Its not enough for Dundee to find the
stolen cows, John Titus wants to blame the thievery on a specific personBlue Roan Hardesty, a onetime friend turned sworn
enemy of the powerful Titus clan. What Dundee
uncovers creates a shooting war out of a simmering feudwith
him in the middle. This omnibus brings together two of Elmer Keltons scarce Texas
novels of the 1960s, stories that exemplify why he is the most honored of
all Western writers.
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SIX BITS A DAY
Forge Books (October 3, 2006)
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Hewey Calloway, the best-loved
cowboy in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger
years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to
find work in the West Texas cow country.The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines
for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey
is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits--75 cents--a day on
the Pecos
River ranch owned by the
penny-pinching C.C. Tarpley. Hewey,
who "usually accepted the vagaries of life without getting his
underwear in a twist", is fun-loving and whiskey-drinking. He spends
every penny he earns and regularly gets into trouble with his boss--and
occasionally with the law--often dragging innocent Walter along.When Walter falls in love with a boarding house
girl and begins dreaming of a farmer's life, Hewey
jumps at the chance to rescue him from this fate worse than death. He
convinces Walter to join him on a mission for Tarpley,
driving 600 head of cattle from beyond San Antonio to the Double-C ranch on
the Pecos.The journey is both memorable and
dangerous: a murderous outlaw is searching for Hewey;
and another ruthless character is determined to sabotage the cattle drive.
When the drovers reach the Pecos they find
Boss Tarpley in the midst of a vicious range feud
with Eli Jessup, a neighboring cowman. Hewey and
his brother Walter have to get the herd safely across Jessup's land-but
how? |
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SONS OF TEXAS
Forge Books (May 12, 2005)
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In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's
Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the
western Tennessee
canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming,
and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a
foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild
horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee.
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