Elmer Kelton

In Bitter Trail, Kelton tells the story of a tough teamster named Frio Wheeler whose wagons haul cotton from Texas to Mexico. Sounds like a peaceable enterprise. The problem is that the Civil War is raging throughout the South and Wheeler's cotton is to be sold for gold, gold used to buy guns and ammunition for the Confederate army. And, added to his balky mules, the broiling heat, and killing drought of the Mexican dessert, Wheeler has even more...

Deputy Sheriff Jim-Bob McClain isn't sure he's ready to follow in his father's footsteps as the law in Coolridge County. In fact, he has a hard enough time keeping the peace between the drunks in the local saloon. But, with tough Sheriff Mont Naylor to back him up he figures he can handle whatever comes his way. Jim-Bob's first real assignment is no piece of cake. He must escort a ruthless outlaw into the hands of justice. All seems well with the...

Donovan was supposed to be dead. The town of Dry Fork, southern Texas, had buried him years before when Uncle Joe Vickers had fired off both barrels of a shotgun into the vicious outlaw's face as he was escaping from jail. Now, Uncle Joe has been shot-in just the same way. And, Judge Upshaw had found a noose hanging on his door. It looked as though Donovan was back-gunning for the people who had tracked him down and tried him. Sheriff Webb Matlock,...

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...

Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, young, hard-working cowboys from Fort Concho, Texas, have worked six months at $20 a month on the Devil's River. Their boss, a hawk-faced cow trader named Larramore, reneges on the money he owes the boys and sneaks out of the cow camp, and heads for San Angelo. Fristo is tall and thin, his mind a hundred miles away; Quitman is short, bandy-legged, and “bedazzled by the flash of cards and the slosh of whiskey.”...

Working faithfully for a Texas rancher despite his family's warnings, Chacho Fernandez steals his payment when his dishonest employer refuses to compensate him and is falsely accused of murdering a lawman.