From his decision to leave school at fifteen to roam the world, to his recollections of life as a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, as a cattle skinner in Texas, as a merchant seaman in Singapore and the West Indies, and as an itinerant bare-knuckled prizefighter across small-town America, here is Louis L'Amour's memoir of his lifelong love affair with learning--from books, from wandering, and from some remarkable men and women--that shaped him...

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw...

Elmer Kelton writes of his boyhood in the sandhills of West Texas. The sons of Buck Kelton, a respected third-generation cowboy and ranch foreman, were expected to follow in Buck's footsteps, but Elmer strayed. Never much of a horseman, nor adept at the cowboy's trade, he went off to college and then into journalism and novel writing -- a good career choice, as it turned out.

Burns describes Billy the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. He paints the Kid as a representation of the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilization was rapidly displacing. When Pat Garrett, the courageous sheriff of Lincoln County, shot Billy in 1881, it hastened the closing of the American frontier.

Historians agree : Sheriff Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid, July 14, 1881. Why? Because Pat Garrett and Pete Maxwell said he did. Garret's claim has been shrouded in controversy from the very beginning. One hundred thirty years later the controversy persists. Why? Because there are contradictions, irregularities and unanswered questions that simply won't go away. John Poe, Garrett's deputy on the scene that night, and others question Garrett's claim....