Will Brite is a Slash Five cowboy working in the Middle Concho region of Texas in the winter of 1884 when a blizzard descends upon himthe likes of which he has never seen. Trapped under his horse and entangled in a barbed wire fence, Will finds an unexpected (and unwelcome) savior in the form of Zeke Boles, a former slave on the run from a bloody, guilt-filled past.
In Zeke s dark features Will sees a reflection of the haunting memories he has been trying to escape for so long, but he reluctantly offers him shelter for the night at the Slash Five camp. Little does he know that their...

Rising at 11,750 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range and snaking 926 miles through New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande, the Pecos River is one of the most storied waterways in the American West. It is also one of the most troubled. In 1942, the National Resources Planning Board observed that the Pecos River basin -probably presents a greater aggregation of problems associated with land and water use than any other irrigated basin in the Western U.S.- In the twenty-first century, the river's problems have only multiplied. Bitter Waters, the first book-length study of the entire...

Author Patrick Dearen brings the reckless and risky adventures of real cowboys to life with colorful stories from interviews with 76 men who cowboyed in the West before 1932 as well as 150 archival interviews and written accounts from as early as the 1870s and well into the mid-twentieth century.