Kirjahaku

Harry Sinclair Drago writes with authority and a sense of drama about the bloodiest range conflicts in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana late in the nineteenth century. He details the background and events surrounding the Lincoln County War of New Mexico (1878–81), a violent struggle for economic supremacy between cattle barons and merchants; the ironically named Pleasant Valley War of Arizona (1886–92), a conflict between cattlemen and sheepmen complicated by personal vendettas and old family rivalries; and the Johnson County War of Wyoming (1892), a folly that turned bloody when big cattlemen rode against suspected and known thieves with orders to shoot. These pages are filled with some showy characters: cowmen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving; the Grahams and Tewksburys, western counterparts of the Hatfields and McCoys; William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, who cut a swath in the Lincoln County War; and Ella Watson, said to have been the notorious Cattle Kate Maxwell, after she was lynched for cattle rustling.

The tinkling of guitars in the moonlight; the softly hummed words of a Spanish love song; the sweet, liquid music of the bells in the mission San Carlos De Carmelo; fleeting pictures of old Father Junipero Serro—these and a hundred other rich memories flood the mind as one unfolds the story of little Suzanna, a peon girl, poor, futureless at a time when the Dons and the grandsons of the conquistadores were supreme in California. You think of Ramona; the dust covered stretches of El Camino Real—the King’s Highway—appear before your eyes; you hear the roaring of quaint, old-fashioned, muzzleloading guns, the clash of cold steel; subconsciously you thrill to the deeds of valor, of sacrifice and danger. You are in step with romance and adventure when it was in its heyday in Old California. Red-lipped, smoky-eyed senoritas smile on you; your nostrils dilate with ungent aromas of hot, golden brown tortillas, or fragrant, steaming tamales; for you the clock has been turned back a hundred years—you walk in a land that is gone, but in which fate played as recklessly with the lives of men and women as it does in our own world today.

When Angel Irosabel rides with his family into the fertile valleys of Paradise, Nevada, he knows that their grueling journey from Basque country is over—he has found a place for his sheep to graze and for his family to thrive. Little did he know that his arrival would kick off an epic feud between the area cattle ranchers and his own herding clan. When his daughter Margarida falls in love with Joe Gault, the son of a cowman, Angel can’t overcome years of hostility, and instead disowns his treacherous daughter. When tragedy strikes, forcing Joe on the run, leaving Margarida broken-hearted, the cycle of hatred and distrust is passed to the next generation. When the Gaults’ son Joseph falls in love with the daughter of another rancher, only time will tell whether family bonds can overcome the rancor that flows deep in the veins of the herders and cowmen.

An Oregon reservation has suddenly been vacated and Henry Stall, a seasoned ranch owner, didn’t get the news in time. He is driven to continue the expansion of his cattle empire in the American northwest, and when he goes to stake his claim, conflict erupts between the old and new guards of ranchers on the open range. Stall combats the restraints of his age, and sets off on a strenuous endeavor to confront Jim Montana, his former employee and the commissioner of the newly vacant property. Heads turn as Stall and Montana mobilize and contend for a share in this territory—and to claim it rightfully theirs. Stall is determined to defend his reputation as a veteran proprietor, while Montana wants to assert his own authority as an emerging official, and their collision sets off a whirlwind of scraps, skirmishes, and showdowns. It falls upon each ranch to wrangle whatever forces it can to carve out a corner of the expanding cattle country before its neighbors. When the law of the land overrides the governing regulations on boundary lines, what emerges is a full-blown range war—and putting down a stake on unclaimed territory becomes more hazardous than ever.

Tascosa Cummings left behind the tedious life of cattle ranching years ago; now he lives the carefree, nomadic life of a true cowboy, trading in herds for horses and barbed wire fences for the open Oklahoma range. When Tas and his band of mounted men find themselves in the crossfire of a two-sided range war with nothing but their horses, their guns, and a wagon of supplies for defense, getting out alive with their guns in their holsters just doesn’t seem to be an option.Doing business on the range at a time when the people who enforce the law are the very same who break it, it becomes practical for Tas and his Sawbuck gang to turn and ride away before shots are fired and the dust gets kicked up; if you don’t see anything, you can’t say anything. But when the good and the bad join forces in a veritable No Man’s Land, it’s up to each mounted man to defend what’s rightfully his—his bronc, his brand, and his name—law or no law.

Smoke of the .45, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.