Classic Western Literature

A collection of 14 western short campfire stories. Bandits, desperadoes, cattle, and bloody shoot-outs are just some of the highlights of these easy to listen to snippets which continued to mimic Andy's life on the cattle trail. Dell and Joel Wells are about to abandon their dead father's claim on Beaver Creek because it won't grow crops. Then unexpected events, and a drover seeking aid, allow them a decent chance in life. The boys develop their own ranch on the Beaver, without capital but with honor. No amount of savvy can entirely prepare them for the risks: cruel winters, rapacious wolf packs, summer droughts, mysterious Texas fever, or the shifting circumstances of the cattle trade.

The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days, was published in 1903. Even though it is a fictional book, the story is based exclusively on his personal experiences. He gives listeners a daily description of a cattle drive that he made from Texas to Montana. This authentic first-hand account has been described as "literature's best account of life as a cowboy," and is still one of the most treasured publications in the western genre, by both pleasure readers and historians.

In O Pioneers, we meet the Bergsons, a family of farmers in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska who have emigrated to America from Sweden. When the family patriarch dies, the running of the farm falls to the eldest daughter, Alexandra, who struggles to make the farm viable and provide for the family. Eventually, the focus turns to the romantic entanglements of Alexandra and her brother as well as touching upon the enormous difficulties of running a farm at the turn of the last century.

Nophai, an extremely intelligent and talented "Indian with the mind of a white man" attempts to reacclimate into the world he left 18 years earlier. A task made more difficult by the fact he and a white woman have fallen in love. Corrupt missionaries and Indian agents only add to his conflict.

Young Texas Ranger Russ Sittell is undercover searching for the head of a gang of rustlers - working with his ranger mentor and idol, Vaughn Steele. Staying undercover is difficult. Both rangers have difficulty staying focused while falling in love - can they uncover the criminals and keep love in its rightful place? Zane Grey tells the story in The Rustlers of Pecos County.

Willis Lander was once the T-Bar ranch's best bronc buster. Then came the day when a stallion as black as pitch and as mean as a rattler shattered his knee. Unable to perform the duties required of a cowboy, Willis took the only job he felt capable of handling - minding the line shack 40 miles from the ranch - and secluded himself from the pity of his peers in the Wyoming wilderness. Now, the T-Bar is being sold, leaving Willis to wonder whether the new owner will want to keep a broken bronc buster on the payroll.

After five years of living in the wild and dangerous Rocky Mountains, Zach Connors is concerned his Indian family will not be prepared for the eventual settling of the West. They have lived isolated in the wilderness their whole lives and have no idea how many white men will eventually come into their lands. Zach has seen the Indian tribes pushed from their homes in Kentucky and Tennessee because they would not learn to live in the white man’s world. He wants to ensure his family and friends will survive in a world he is sure will change.

Duster Dorword's first cattle drive is almost the death of him. Will he survive the harsh trail life, Mexican bandits, and a kidnapping? Rescue comes from the most unlikely place - but will it come in time?

The Wilcox and Son Detective Agency is working on its second case file, but Matthew and his son Chance are beginning to think they might have bit off more than they can chew. Their investigation into a series of claim-jumps near the booming mining community of Wallace, Idaho, suddenly turns deadly as one witness after another turns up dead. It turns out that the theft of land and mineral rights is only the beginning of a much deeper conspiracy. Matthew and Chance follow the leads as best they can, knowing full well that their investigation has turned into a game of cat and mouse.

Tom Warren, a giant of a man in stature and physical strength, experiencing a deadly tragedy, turns to his new life as a mountain man in the largely unexplored mountain west, facing its many dangers in an attempt to forget his earlier life. Tom soon discovers new friendships among his kind at historic Fort Union, matched only by subsequent dangers and challenges from grizzly bears, renegade fur trappers, an Indian out to kill him and the rescue of an Indian maiden in distress which gains him more deadly enemies.

In this third book in the Dead Man series, Marshal Matthew Wilcox heads out alone to find and capture one of the worst villains he will ever face. Heartsick, he traces a convoluted trail of murder, mayhem, and deceit...from the high gates of the Walla Walla State Penitentiary to Seattle and on into Billings, Montana. Although Matthew feels that he must bear the burden of a "deadman’s revenge" by himself, he will find help and succor in his travels from his friends, Sheriff Roy Smithers, Deputy Dicky McNulty, Calamity Jane, Liver Eating Johnson...and his son, Chance.

In the 1830s, Jack Kelly is an Irish lad sold into indentured servitude. Jack's master turns out to be a mean-tempered drunk in frontier St. Louis and treats him harshly. There, Jack learns how to hunt, shoot a bow and arrow, trap, and throw a Tomahawk superbly - gaining his nickname, "Hatchet Jack". One day, Jack's master beats him to within an inch of his life. Jack vows to escape to the untamed West to become a Mountain Man fur trapper. Thus begins an adventure.

A tired old lawyer with a secret past and the young protégé that he rescued from a wagon train attack that killed his parents and left him an orphan are warriors in the tough town of Tombstone. Warriors of the code.... They are equally adept with the Commentaries of Law, a book by William Blackstone...and the revolver, a pistol by Samuel Colt.

In 1829, Jacob and Martin left Kentucky to become mountain men, trappers of the Rocky Mountains. The rugged mountains that lay beyond America’s frontier remained mostly unexplored. In those days, the killing was good. But the two young men would also find that life would be hardscrabble in the high frontier. They would face grizzly bears and hostile Indians. And they would risk horse wrecks and mountain storms to trade their furs each year at the rendezvous.

The Panhandle was a lonely purple range land, unfenced, and wind swept. Bill Smith, cattleman, threw up a cabin and looked at the future with hopeful eyes. One day while plowing almost out of sight of his little home - which that morning he had left apprehensively owing to an impending event - he espied his wife Margaret coming along the edge of the plowed field. She had brought his lunch this day, despite his order to the contrary.

A classic work of Texas fiction from M.E.M. Davis, Under the Man-Fig was first published in1895. Part romance, part satire, and part realism, this entertaining novel takes place in the fictional town of Thornham on the Texas Gulf Coast. Under the sprawling branches of the ancient man-fig tree in the town square, all the male gossips of Thornham sit around and spin their colorful yarns - and in so doing, unwittingly weave a folk history of the Old South. This important work resounds with a reading from narrator Sally Darling.

From the master of the western comes a tale of love tested by the rugged life of the American Southwest. Glenn Kilbourne returned from World War I a changed man. Suffering from shell shock and disillusioned by what he witnessed, he can no longer stomach his high-flying former life in New York City. In the canyons of Arizona he finds a kind of peace with himself, and has no desire to go back to his old life. Where does this leave his glamorous fiancé Carley?

When a man known only as The Deacon set up camp outside Rookwood, a murder of crows took to unnatural, moonlit flight. The crows came to Rookwood; trouble soon to follow. Things were already strange in that God-forsaken town, but no one could have predicted the forces and fates about to meet in a dust-bowl clearing in the desert. A Preacher. A Demon. An Angel. A Gunslinger.

Jack Hare is a young New Englander who has decided to travel to the West. He is rescued from sure death in the Utah desert by an old settler named August Naab, a Mormon patriarch. Jack is taken to Nabb's ranch and learns that it can be a dangerous place, since it is challenged by cattle thieves and a corrupt rancher who is after Naab's water rights. The greatest danger Hare faces, though, is over Mescal, a half-Navajo shepherdess with whom he falls in love.

A mountain man can survive anything, even a cold day in hell. Nathaniel Squire is a giant of a man, and the only one Col. Leander Melton thought could lead his pack of greenhorn would-be trappers into the mountains. And deep in Blackfoot territory, Squire must teach the youths to face the ways of survival, the rage of the Blackfeet, the cunning of a traitor - and what it means to be a mountain man.