Frank Carlson Library

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, in 1883, 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...

Cowboy Hewey Calloway travels to west Texas with his beloved brother, Walter, to find work, struggles to prevent his brother's ill-fated marriage, and drives six hundred head of cattle to a Pecos ranch in the face of dangerous challenges.

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.

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...

From rodeos to rustlers, from ranch life to the outlaw trail, Elmer Kelton's take on the human condition shows us life in Texas as it was back then: simpler, but harder, with danger always present. Readers will meet several unforgettable characters, including a young veteran who overcomes his PTSD to fight a fire ravaging his town, a sheriff who continues to chase bandits despite having lost his job, and a frontier housewife who refuses to let her...

"Bandits, outlaws, romance, and adventure abound in Hard Ride, the second-ever collection of tales of the American West from renowned, seven-time Spur Award-winning author Elmer Kelton. Each of Elmer Kelton's superb stories of the West showcase the strength and power of western spirit. They are filled with marvelous characters--from a rodeo clown who seeks redemption via romance, to an outlaw who comes to the aid of ranchers with no other recourse...

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. But Mordecai's party encounters a Spanish patrol determined...

Stand Proud: "Frank Claymore is cantankerous, stubborn, and intolerant--just the qualities that make him a success as an open-range cattle rancher on the West Texas frontier. Stand Proud follows Claymore from the time of the Civil War to the dawn of the twentieth century--through marriage, births, deaths, and a creeping change in the society that once hailed him as a hero, and which later has him condemned as a despoiler and tried for murder." --...

Captain's Rangers: "In 1875, nearly forty years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texans are still spilling blood over ownership of the Nueces Strip--a hot, dry stretch of coastal prairie that bushwhackers and horse thieves have turned into a lawless hell. Captain L. H. McNelly, a complex and determined Confederate veteran, is brought into the Nueces Strip for one purpose: to keep the peace. His measures are harsh and controversial, but McNelly...