Texas Rangers Books

"The Buckskin Line tells of Texas' chaotic early years, when a ragtag group of irregular volunteers fought to defend the far edges of settlement from incursion by Indians and frontier outlaws. In time, they would become known as the Texas Rangers."―Elmer Kelton This is a story of the early days when... An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father. Not long ago, Mike Shannon, was bushwhacked and killed, and his death still haunts Rusty. Rusty thinks he knows the identity of Mike's killers. But with Texas now in the throes of seceding from the Union, Rusty has his hands full fighting for the law in lawless Texas and for the life of the woman he loves. If that were not enough of a burden, Rusty is also heading for a showdown with the Comanche warrior who killed his family over twenty years ago.

The Texas Frontier, 1865 The Civil War is over and Texas is reluctantly yielding to the Union soldiers spreading across the state, even into the dangerous Comanche country. David "Rusty" Shannon, proud member of a "ranging company" attempting to protect Texas settlers from Indian depredations, finds that the rangers are being disbanded. He makes his way home to his land on the Red River, hoping to take up the life of a farmer and the hand of the beloved girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. But Geneva has married in Rusty's long absence and the country is filled with hostiles―not just Indians, but hate-filled Confederates, overbearing Union soldiers, and army renegades. Rusty's youth as a captive of the Comanches returns to haunt him when, in pursuit of Indian raiders, he takes as prisoner Badger Boy, a white child taken from his murdered parents by a Comanche warrior.

The Civil War has ended, and Union soldiers and federal officials have taken control of Texas as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. As a child he was a captive of the Comanche, as a young man a proud member of a ranging company protecting settlers from Indian raids. Shannon's fate is intertwined with the young man accompanying him: Andy Pickard, himself but recently rescued from Comanche captivity and known by his captors as Badger Boy. Texas is in turmoil, overrun with murderous outlaws, lawmen exacting penalties from suspected former Confederates, nightriders, and the ever-dangerous Comanche bands. In this tempestuous time and place, Rusty tries desperately to resume his prewar life. His friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by the Ku Klux Klan; his own homestead is confiscated by his special nemesis, the murderous Oldham brothers; and the son of a girl he once loved is kidnapped by Comanches. Elmer Kelton, a master of novelist of the American West, literature, has crafted a satisfying and remarkably accurate tale of Texas life at the end of the Civil War. Elmer Kelton, most honored of all Western writers, writes of the formative years of the Texas Rangers with the knowledge of a native Texan and the skill of a master storyteller. In Rusty Shannon, tough and smart--necessary survival attributes on the 1860s Texas frontier--Kelton has created one of the most memorable characters in modern Western fiction.

After the murder of his wife Josie, Texas Ranger Rusty Shannon heads out on the revenge trail, but he soon finds he is tracking the wrong man, in a novel chronicling the exploits and adventures of the Texas Rangers in the Old West. Reprint.

In this fifth volume of his Texas Rangers series, Elmer Kelton takes the young ranger Andy Pickard, once a Comanche captive called Badger Boy, into the midst of a bloody vendetta between hate-filled families. Pickard and ranger Farley Brackett, a former Confederate soldier, are assigned to deliver prisoner Jayce Landon to the sheriff of a neighboring county to stand trial for killing a man named Ned Hopper but from the outset the seemingly simple assignment gets complicated. The Landon and Hopper families are in a blood feud; the Landons are gathering to free Jayce, and the Hoppers are gathering to kill him. Filled with the author's always engaging characters and set in the historically accurate backdrop of post-Civil War Texas, Texas Vendetta chronicles the pinnacle era of the legendary Texas Rangers.

This is Jericho's Road. Take the Other. When the young Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is assigned to the Texas-Mexico border he learns the meaning of this ominous notice on the edge of a great tract of ranch land above the Rio Grande. It is Jericho Jackson's country and Jackson is at war with a similarly ruthless cattle baron on the Mexican side of the river, Guadalupe Chavez. The two men are rustling each others' cattle, raiding and killing on both sides of the border, and heading for a bloody showdown-with the Texas Rangers standing between them.

Hard Trail to Follow is the seventh novel in Elmer Kelton's acclaimed "Texas Ranger" series from Elmer Kelton Former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, called "Badger Boy" when he lived with Comanches as a child, is following the plow on West Texas land until he learns that his friend, Sheriff Tom Blessing, has been killed during a jailbreak. The escaped bank robbers are led by a man calling himself Cordell. Andy gets reinstated as a Ranger so he can catch Cordell and get justice for Tom Blessing. Cordell is something of an enigma to Andy, especially since the pursuit slowly reveals that he is very likely not the killer of Tom Blessing. Even so, Cordell and his cohorts must be brought to Ranger justice first and the whodunit sorted out later.

Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, newly married and unsure of himself and his choice of career, is given what appears to be a routine assignment: find and arrest a horse trader named Donley Bannister who is accused of murder. The difficulty begins after Andy locates Bannister's West Texas hideout and is shot by one of the trader's cohorts. In an ironic twist, Bannister saves the ranger's life by taking him to a cow camp where his wound can be treated. Then Bannister disappears. This routine assignment gets even more complicated after Andy heals well enough to ride and follows the trader's young wife, hoping she will lead him to her husband. Near Fort Concho the ranger's mission is interrupted when Bannister is shot and left for dead by an outlaw who takes Geneva Bannister hostage and brutally assaults her. Even after Bannister is apprehended, danger lurks; one of the trader's enemies is determined to ambush the ranger and his prisoner. From the experience, Andy Pickard learns a valuable lesson: nothing stirs emotions in Texas as men stealing other men's horses.

Newly married and dreaming of settling down on his ranch on the Guadalupe River, Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is dispatched to central Texas to investigate a series of murders and cattle thefts. Pickard and his new partner, Logan Daggett, soon learn that the two biggest cattlemen in the region are at each others’ throats—and that one or the other is blamed for each act of violence. After getting to know the ranchers, however, Ranger Pickard suspects that neither is guilty.Adding fuel to the fire is the rise of the "regulators," a gang of masked vigilantes whose identities are kept so secret that men suspected of divulging their names have been killed.  On top of this comes the arrival of a notorious gunman whose sudden appearance is noted especially by Ranger Daggett, who knows the man and his deadly reputation