In Stand Proud, one of his most controversial novels, legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton takes on a character who is not as easy to like as he is to admire.

Repub. of Doubleday 1973 edition, with new introductions by Kelton and an afterword.

When former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard's friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing, is killed during the escape of a trio of bank robbers, he is reinstated and picks up their trail to bring the killer to justice.

The Barfield brothers are separated by a Comanche raid. Years later, they are destined to be reunited and discover how their separate lives have changed them.

A different kind of range war erupts between cowboys and ranchers in The Day the Cowboys Quit from seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. The time is 1883, the place is the Texas Panhandle. Cowboys refuse to be stigmatized as drinkers and exploited by the wealthy cattle owners who don't pay liveable wages. Those very same ranchers want to take away the cowboys' right to own cattle because this ownership, the ranchers believe, would lead to thieving. So the dictum is set: If you're a cowboy, you can't own a cow. When rumors of such legislation travel from wagon to wagon, the cowboys decided to rally and fight for their rights--they gather together and strike. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In 1999, with Forge's publication of The Buckskin Line, Elmer Kelton launched a series of novels on the formative years of the Texas Rangers. In Texas Justice, the first three of these critically acclaimed books are now brought together in a single volume. In The Buckskin Line, Kelton introduces the red-haired boy captured by a Comanche war party after the massacre of his family. Rescued by Mike Shannon, a member of a Texas "ranging company" protecting settlers from Indian raids, the boy known as Rusty is adopted by the Shannon family. In 1861, Mike Shannon is ambushed and killed, and Rusty follows in his footsteps and joins the Rangers. In the throes of the coming War Between the States, Rusty searches for the Confederates who lynched his adoptive father and awaits meeting the Comanche warrior who killed his family two decades past. At the end of the Civil War, Rusty Shannon is thrown adrift when the Rangers are disbanded, and makes his way to his home on the Red River, where he hopes to marry the girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. But as Badger Boy, the second novel of the saga, unfolds, Geneva has married another man in Rusty's absence. Faced with this betrayal, he must contend with the hate-filled Confederate and Union soldiers infesting Texas and with the continuing Indian raids against innocent settlers. Rusty's own childhood captivity returns to haunt him when he rescues Andy, a white child called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors. In The Way of the Coyote, Andy rides with Rusty Shannon as the Rangers are re-formed in postwar turmoil. With Texas overrun with outlaws, disenfranchised Confederate veterans, nightriders, and marauding Comanche bands, Rusty tries to resume his pre-war life. When his friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by Ku Klux Klan and Rusty's own homestead is confiscated by a murderous band of thugs, he must follow perilous trails before he can put the war and its aftermath behind him. Texas Justice is not only a masterful re-creation of the early years of the Texas Rangers, it is vintage Elmer Kelton, the undisputed master of the Western story. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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 getting what is due to them. In Shotgun, Texas rancher Blair Bishop has to contend with a rival cowman who is turning his herd loose on Bishop‘s 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 determined to get even with the man who sent him up the river. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.