"The men who ride the open range of the far West are known under a variety of names: vaquero, range rider, mustanger and buckaroo, but the name most commonly known is cowboy. The nature of a cowboy's work demands independence and toughness. He is a man of action; yet the long, lonely hours spent in the saddle provide ample time to develop a unique outlook on life. Simply put, a cowboy's tenet is, 'What cannot be cured is endured.' And endured with cheerfulness and good humor. It is far bet...

"Through bravery, courage and strength of character these men and women stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries.They are our true Western American Heroes."

"BIG FRANK BATTLE LEANED AN ELBOW AGAINST THE HOOD OF HIS battered, flatbed truck and gazed with arrogant pride over his empire: his secluded valley, his sprawling ranch, his livestock. He had not the slightest inkling that before this particular morning played itself out, his body would fail him, the power he loved to wield so fiercely would crumble to dust and all the ugly secrets he had managed to keep hidden these many years would be laid bare to the world. A blood clot, a puny thing s...

"Born into every generation are a few restless souls who long for adventure. In the early 1800s this wild breed became mountain men who headed up the Missouri, crossed the Rock-ies and continued west, hunting, trapping and exploring as they went.One mountainman,reflecting the general attitude of the day, wrote, 'We found the richest place for beaver we had yet come across, and it took us forty days to clean that section.' Valley by valley, stream by stream, the mountain men elimina...

"After a day spent working cattle, Waddy Wilder sits in a small town bar on Oregon's dry side contemplating his forty years of buckarooing. He is trying to decide if he should keep rolling along like a tumbleweed, or settle down with that divorced gal on her five-acre ranchette and play husband and daddy to her two kids. Then a woman on the prowl comes along, and they run off to Alaska where the red-hot romance soon cools.Forty Candles on a Cowboy Cake is an entertaining contempora...

In spare, honest, and picturesque language, Rick Steber sets this Spur Award-winning novel on the Klamath Indian reservation in 1961 just days before the tribe's "termination" by the U. S. government. Each tribal member received a $43,000 settlement from the government in return for the Klamath's 1-million acre reservation and the end of the Klamath's tribal status. Buy the Chief a Cadillac explores life on the reservation for three brothers—the alcoholism, violence, greed, and madness—bro...

"This book is the first telling of what was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the 'longest canoe trip in history'-an eighteen-month, 7,865-mile saga of two young men and a canoe named Muriel. The year was 1936. The place was New York City, where two young office workers, weary of the depression, embarked on one of history's most remarkable expeditions. They left New York City at the foot of 42nd street and paddled their canoe across the uncharted wilds of Canada to Nome, Alas...

At the 1911 Pendleton Round-Up, the Saddle Bronc Championship of the Northwest came down to three men of different skin colors - Jackson Sundown, a Nez Perce Indian, John Spain, a white man from pioneering stock, and George Fletcher, an African American. Red. White. Black.What happened that September Day in 1911 - the judges' decision and the reaction of the crowd in the aftermath - forever changed our history, and the way the sport of rogeo, and the emerging West, was to look at it...

"The names of the gunfighters are legendary: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Henry Plummer, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok.... These men, and others like them, epitomize the image of the Wild West.The gunfighting era was born in the late 1830s when Samuel Colt patented his single-barreled pistol with a revolving bullet chamber.But the gunfighter was not common on the frontier until after the Civil War w...

"One of the great things about the West is that our history lies so close to the surface. It was our grand parents and parents who were the pioneers.The first wagon train west arrived late in the fall of 1843. It is estimated one-half million emigrants traveled this great wagon trail, until the advent of the automobile ended the era in the early 1900s. Today stretches of the Oregon Trail are still visible as ruts -ruts carved into the earth, worn by time and masked by wildflowers, ...

This true contemporary story reads like pages ripped from a dime novel. All-Around rodeo cowboy, Mac Griffith, is gunned down after a barroom brawl. The shooter is arrested and charged with murder. At the ensuing trial, a cast of truly colorful western characters parade to the witness stand. It is their testimony—what they have to say and what they are not allowed to say—that leads the jury to make its ultimate decision.After a half-century this case is revisited, and this time thos...

"Grandma grew up on a farm and, at a relatively young age, she fell in love and married Grandpa. They moved west, found the opportunities to their liking and together they raised a wonderful family.Grandma was the glue that held the family together. She performed the necessary domestic tasks of making a home - caring for the children, cleaning, cooking, baking, washing, sewing and darning. She also tended the chickens, milked the cows and churned the cream to butter. And when neces...