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...

The Civil War has ended, 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 he proudly protected settlers from Indian raids. Shannon's fate is intertwined with his companion's: young Andy Pickard, himself recently rescued from Comanche captivity. But Texas is in turmoil, overrun with murderous outlaws, vengeful lawman, night riders...

Andy, a young Texas Ranger, joins forces with Farley, a Confederate soldier turned ranger, to deliver a prisoner to stand trial for murder, but the two lawmen soon find themselves in the middle of two warring families.

Former Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, struggling to adjust to life as a farmer after becoming engaged to Bethel Brackett, takes a "time out" to visit his friend Sheriff Tom Blessing and is drawn back into the Rangers when a trio of bank robbers escapes from the county jail and Blessing is killed in the ensuing chaos.

In Texas standoff, Ranger Andy Pickard and his partner, Logan Daggett, are sent to central Texas to investigate a series of killings and cattle thefts. The two biggest cattlemen in the area blame each other for the violence, but it seems to Andy that neither man may be guilty. The case is complicated by the rise of a gang of "regulators"-masked vigilantes-and the arrival of a notorious hired gunman whose employer is unknown. The murder of a captured...