An anthology of short stories that paints a vivid and panoramic vista of the real American West as lived by cowboys of the current generation. Every story in this volume is true and will take the reader into situations that only cowboys experience.

"In our leggings' pockets we'd each stashed guns. I'd packed a .357 magnum pistol, and Jose had a .22 pistol. When we got close to the wax camp, Jose said he thought they would have a trap set for us, and we'd be outnumbered. We both agreed that the best thing we could do was to keep our mouths shut under the circumstances. We rode into the camp, and Casus, the man I figured stole the cow, had a little fire going and had coffee ready and some tacos made. He invited us off our horses, and I noticed a .30-.30 rifle sitting pretty close to his hand." Apache Adams is somewhat of a living legend out in the Big Bend country of Texas. Born in 1937 and raised on the Rio Grande, he has lived the cowboy life most people believe ended in the 1800's. He has been inducted into the Big Bend Cowboy Hall of Fame, given the Working Cowboy Award by the National Cowboy Symposium, the Heritage Award by the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and won more buckles and saddles then he can count. But this book isn't about awards or buckles; it's about the life and adventures of a working cowboy. Ride along with Apache through the desolate canyons of the Big Bend and swim the Rio Grande horseback tracking cow thieves. Ride the river catching illegal Mexican cattle. Take a deep seat in your saddle when you rope a 2,000 pound maverick bull, get him to the ground, and tie his feet without any help. Tied Hard and Fast isn't a bunch of tall tales. It is the compilation of a lifetime of stories and adventures told in the voice of the man who lived them. "We followed the dogs up into a big rock slide, and they had about a 70- to 80-pound female mountain lion treed on a big rock. The dogs had her surrounded, but none of us had any kind of a gun. So I jerked my rope down and just kinda pitched it at the lion on that rock. She swatted at the rope, and I pulled it up tight around her front paw. The mule I was riding was pretty green and, when the cat started throwing a fit with the rope on her paw, decided to take off. I jerked the lion off the rock, and then the dogs all jumped on the lion. So I was dragging a lion around in circles with a bunch of dogs chewing on her, and she was putting up a pretty good fight with three legs." Along with living these stories, Apache has shared them with audiences at the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Arizona Cowboy Poet's Gathering, the Ruidosa New Mexico Gathering, and other events across the west. Once you pick this book up, you'll say, "I'll just read one more story and then put it down for the night..".but you can't!

Short stories about cowboys and their lifestyles in the American West.

Want to know how to throw a half-diamond hitch and wild a branding iron? Interested in the recipe for S. B. stew? This authoritative manual by an old-time cowboy explains it all. 600 black-and-white illustrations.

Biography of a Western rancher.

One of the earliest great stories of English literature after ?Beowulf?, ?Sir Gawain? is the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts King Arthur's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging the knights to a wager. Simon Armitrage, one of Britain's leading poets, has produced an inventive and groundbreaking translation that " helps] liberate ?Gawain ?from academia" (?Sunday Telegraph?).

nonfiction cowboy stories

In the late 19th century, orphaned Jim Burden is sent to the wilderness in Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He arrives at the same time as the Shimerda family, including the eldest daughter Ántonia, who becomes his closest neighbors. Life in the American West is tough, especially for the impoverished Shimerda family, and pioneers must struggle for survival. A friendship blossoms between Jim and Ántonia as they explore nature and have adventures together, a friendship that will last a lifetime. My Ántonia became an immediate success when first published and is today considered Willa Cather's first masterpiece. It is praised for its depiction of the American West and its ability to highlight the aspirations of ordinary, poor people in a time when it was customary to write about the elite. WILLA CATHER [1873-1947] was an American author. After studying at the University of Nebraska, she worked as a teacher and journalist. Cather's novels often focus on settlers in the USA with a particular emphasis on female pioneers. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, and in 1943, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a lost Hermetic text - soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

An enormously satisfying, exciting and enriching book, Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the lives of detective Sartaj Singh and Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. Sartaj, the only Sikh inspector in the whole of Mumbai, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But 'the silky Sikh' is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip off as to the secret hideout of the legendary boss of the G-company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize. This is a sprawling, epic novel of friendships and betrayals, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its underworld. Drawing on the best of Victorian fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Vikram Chandra's years of first hand research on the streets of Mumbai, this novel reads like a potboiling page-turner but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.