"Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys 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...

Lee Morgan dreams of raising the ideal ranch horse-one that has speed, stamina, and heart. On her Texas spread near the town of Burnt Rock, the high-spirited woman heads her own horse ranch operation. It's an unusual occupation for a female in the 1870s, but as an expert horsewoman and a crack shot with a rifle, she's quite adept at taking care of herself. Determined to gain fame for her fine horses, Lee agrees to enter her magnificent coal-black...

"Like a murderous plague, a band of cutthroats and criminals, led by prison escapees from New Mexico, rages through West Texas. They're slaughtering everyone in their path: men, women and children. They struck at Saragosa. Now they've taken over the town of Boracho. The Dallas newspapers call them the Kingdom Come Gang. In Chugwater, Wyoming, Duff [MacCallister] calls them his enemy. Because one of their victims was family. Riding to Texas, Duff gathers...

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...

The Chiricahua Mountains are full of dangers-- and the most terrifying is Apache warrior Red Dog. Skye Fargo rescues a prospector being tortured by Red Dog, which earns him the Apache's hatred.

The Good Old Boys: "Hewey Calloway has a problem. He wants to be a footloose cowboy, endlessly wandering the land on horseback, but the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing. Land is being parceled out, barbed-wire fences are springing up all over, and cars are replacing the horse as a mode of transportation. Swimming against the tide of 'progress,' Hewey begins to understand that the time of the cowboy is over, that the life he dreams...