DONNICE CARRUTH | SPECIAL TO THE TEXAS SPUR
In a town named Spur, surrounded by cattle ranches and the beauty of the untamed land of plateaus and breaks, you shouldn’t be surprised that quite a few of our readers love books about the Old West.
Some of them like historical romance set back in a time when the good guy wearing the white hat rode off into the sunset with the girl. Some like historical nonfiction telling stories of ancestors who lived in the same area but in a different time with a different way of life. Some like fictional accounts of good guys versus bad guys where the good guy usually comes out on top. We have books here to satisfy all of these interests.
Nate Morgan won the 2023 Spur award for Best Paperback Western for “Dead Man’s Trail” the first in the Carson Stone series. Former thief and wanted man Carson Stone dreams of a peaceful life on a ranch built by his own hands, but dreams don’t always come without a steep price. To earn a stake, Carson rides west to collect the reward on a claim-jumper. The land is beautiful, but times are hard as the territory is ravaged by the latest Indian war and a mining boom gone bust. When Stone steps in to defend a family ambushed by murdering marauders, he makes a terrifying discovery: one of the hired killers carries a death list full of names and dollar amounts. But the names on this list belong to upstanding citizens, not criminals. When the local sheriff is gunned down in broad daylight, Carson takes on the one job he never wanted; pinning on a lawman’s tin star to protect the innocent.
Also from Nate Morgan’s Spur award winning Carson Stone series we have “Short Rope for a Tall Man.” With all the gun blazing action of Larry McMurtry, reformed outlaw Carson Stone's quest for redemption sends him riding a hard trail in pursuit of the Wild West's most wanted killer, Big Bob McGraw. McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. With a gang of trigger-happy desperadoes willing to do his bidding, McGraw has robbed banks, stagecoaches, and railroads, raised hell ravaging towns, and left bodies littering the streets in his wake. Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’s been judged guilty by association. To clear his name, Carson teams up with bounty hunter Colby Tate to track down the outlaws now scattered across the frontier and bring them to justice. And Carson must convince his partner to bring McGraw in alive or he’ll never escape the shadow of the hangman’s noose.
From Kevin McCarthy we have “The Wintering Place.” Deserting to escape the horrors of the Indian wars two soldiers, Irish brothers, seek peace with the woman they love. Dakota Territory, 1867. The O’Driscoll brothers have survived a Sioux massacre, but Michael is gravely wounded. The deserters are fleeing north with Tom’s lover, Sara, when they come upon a sheltering rock by a river down off the Bozeman trail. If there is game here, they may survive the winter. But their attempts to find food and endure the savage winter are threatened by the arrival in their camp of two trappers, whose presence sets in motion a series of bloody events that will mark the trio as Outlaws, hunted by the Montana Vigilance Committee, their likenesses appearing on Wanted posters in settlements and mining camps along the trail. Enter any town, and they will have to shoot their way out. The rock and the river become their safe place, and when spring comes, their paradise. But the world seeks its way to them, and even in paradise human nature makes its own trouble.
Check it all out at the library.
