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.

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.

Buck Duane, a good young man, is forced into a gunfight which leads to him killing a man in self-defense. Buck goes through many internal struggles as he strives to keep himself out of trouble which he mostly succeeds. Later he becomes a Texas ranger and helps to apprehend cattle rustlers and outlaws with the only hope to clear his name in the eyes of the law. Will Buck Duane however manage to become a redeemed man and is the love the only power which is strong enough to fight the blood-lust? "The Lone Star Ranger" is a Western novel about life choices, love and redemption and it takes place in Texas, called also "The Lone Star State". Pearl Zane Grey was an American author born in 1872. He is best known with his adventure novels which idealize the American frontier and which largely created a new genre called western. The novel "Riders of the Purple Sage", published in 1912, earned Grey wide popularity. The book turned to the author’s all-time-best seller and also one of the most successful Western novels. Zane Grey wrote more than 80 books which later inspired many Western writers who followed in Zane Grey’s footsteps.

They Rode Good Horses is a culmination of stories, both humorous and entertaining, about the author and his father-in-law who is throughout the book referred to as the ole cowboy. Together and for the better part of fifteen years, they raised, trained, and rode good horses but were more like water and oil whenever together. Perhaps it was because the man the ole cowboy would introduce his friends to as his wife's son-in-law had married his only daughter and was probably not the cowboy he would have preferred she marry. Unfortunately, it was not until after the ole cowboy lost his life in a freak accident by one of the young horses he had raised that his son-in-law came to admire, respect, and understand more of who this man was and the integrity and wisdom he possessed. Follow this journey of real-life experiences as my hope for you, the reader, is that before you come to the end of your trail, you will realize what is most important in life.

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.

William L. Wright (1868-1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers. Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. Wright has also been honored as an inductee into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Waco.