Saga Of A Texas Ranger

Sixteen-year-old Caleb McAdams and his family sell their prosperous farm in Tennessee and head for Texas to escape a deadly feud, but danger also lurks on the Texas frontier. While Caleb is out rounding up longhorns, his family is massacred by Comanches during the great raid of 1840. Seeking revenge, Caleb volunteers to fight with Captain Jack Hays and the Texas Rangers at the battle of Plum Creek. In Star over Texas Caleb McAdams volunteers for service in The Mexican-American War.

This trade paperback re-release of the first volume in the critically acclaimed, lavishly illustrated Texas Ranger series follows the history of the legendary lawmen from their earliest days to the end of the Civil War. In 1998, The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and museum authorized the original hardcover edition as the official commemorative history for the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Texas Rangers.

Knowles pays tribute to a tradition in law enforcement that has endured from the colonial days of Texas to the threshold of the millennium: the 175-year-old saga of the Texas Rangers. 150 photos, many in color.

In 1999, with Forge's publication of The Buckskin Line, Elmer Kelton launched a series of novels on the formative years of the Texas Rangers. In Texas Justice, the first three of these critically acclaimed books are now brought together in a single volume. In The Buckskin Line, Kelton introduces the red-haired boy captured by a Comanche war party after the massacre of his family. Rescued by Mike Shannon, a member of a Texas "ranging company" protecting settlers from Indian raids, the boy known as Rusty is adopted by the Shannon family. In 1861, Mike Shannon is ambushed and killed, and Rusty follows in his footsteps and joins the Rangers. In the throes of the coming War Between the States, Rusty searches for the Confederates who lynched his adoptive father and awaits meeting the Comanche warrior who killed his family two decades past. At the end of the Civil War, Rusty Shannon is thrown adrift when the Rangers are disbanded, and makes his way to his home on the Red River, where he hopes to marry the girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. But as Badger Boy, the second novel of the saga, unfolds, Geneva has married another man in Rusty's absence. Faced with this betrayal, he must contend with the hate-filled Confederate and Union soldiers infesting Texas and with the continuing Indian raids against innocent settlers. Rusty's own childhood captivity returns to haunt him when he rescues Andy, a white child called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors. In The Way of the Coyote, Andy rides with Rusty Shannon as the Rangers are re-formed in postwar turmoil. With Texas overrun with outlaws, disenfranchised Confederate veterans, nightriders, and marauding Comanche bands, Rusty tries to resume his pre-war life. When his friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by Ku Klux Klan and Rusty's own homestead is confiscated by a murderous band of thugs, he must follow perilous trails before he can put the war and its aftermath behind him. Texas Justice is not only a masterful re-creation of the early years of the Texas Rangers, it is vintage Elmer Kelton, the undisputed master of the Western story. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A study in contradictions, prolific writer of Western novels William MacLeod Raine was born in England but relocated to a remote cattle ranch on the Texas border ten years later. Pairing his academic studies in literature and journalism with his real-world experience on the range, MacLeod produced a series of beloved novels chronicling the bravery and courage of Western heroes from every walk of life, including the intrepid lawman referred to in the title of A Texas Ranger.

“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.

This second volume completes the saga of Texas's original lawmen, moving beyond the Civil War to follow the Texas Rangers through half a century of border wars between Texas and Mexico. The book also profiles their run-ins with the KKK, Bonnie and Clyde, outlaw John Wesley Hardin and more. 125 b&w and color photos.

Sixteen-year-old Caleb McAdams and his family sell their prosperous farm in Tennessee and head for Texas to escape a deadly feud, but danger also lurks on the Texas frontier. While Caleb is out rounding up longhorns, his family is massacred by Comanches during the great raid of 1840. Seeking revenge, Caleb volunteers to fight with Captain Jack Hays and the Texas Rangers at the battle of Plum Creek. In Star over Texas Caleb McAdams volunteers for service in The Mexican-American War.