Setting up shop in rip-roaring Spanish Fort, Texas, in the early 1870s, Big Eddie Hager outfitted many cowboys in boots as they headed up the Chisholm Trail. Hager's fame and his company grew with the years, turning Hager Boots & Company, Incorporated, into a global legend. But when a Dallas newspaper reporter arrives in what's left of Spanish Fort, an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the man behind the Hager legend-the real cobbler of Spanish Fort. The Cobbler of Spanish Fort, published for the first time, kicks off this collection of short fiction by Johnny D. Boggs, the most awarded writer in the history of Western Writers of America with nine Spur Awards and 14 Spur finalist honors. A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing-a 2002 Spur winner-tells the story of an Arizona frontier family from the viewpoint of an upright grand piano. A Comanche warrior imprisoned at Florida's Fort Marion attempts to paint his way to freedom in Comanche Camp at Dawn; Buffalo Bill Cody and his wife fight it out to save their marriage in The Cody War; and Wild Bill Hickok umpires a baseball game in Kansas City in Umpire Colt-all Spur Award finalists. Don't expect gunfights on dusty streets. Boggs fills these 21 Western, Civil War and Southern tales, old and new, with quirky cowboys, revenge, humor, heroes, baseball, teens coming of age, and even a kid playing cowboys and Indians with his mother's hair curlers

There's not much reason to go to Spanish Fort nowadays, unless you're drawn there by its past. Today, it's little more than a ghost town with a handful of residents, a half dozen or so ramshackle, weatherbeaten frame houses, an abandoned schoolhouse and a padlocked general store with a sign proclaiming that the Spanish Fort Coon Hunters Association used to gather there for weekly hunts every Saturday morning. But in 1879, young Joe Justin set up shop in a little one-room frame building and put up a sign that read, H. J. Justin, Boot Maker. The opening of his crude, one-man shop marked Spanish Fort's final brush with history. The trail town would fade into oblivion, but it would be remembered as the original home of the company whose name became synonymous with cowboy boots and a part of western lore. Justin Industries today is a far cry from the one-man boot shop of more than a century ago, but its growth wasn't always an easy trail. This anecdotal and lively history of a family and a business, drawn from interviews with John Justin, Jr., newspaper and magazine articles and company records, traces the company - and its boots - through moves to Nocona and Fort Worth, periods of serious financial difficulties, family legal squabbles, and an unfriendly takeover attempt along the way to its present status as a $500 million enterprise with interests in publishing and building materials. But boots are still the focus - the Justin Boot Company, the Nocona Boot Company, and the Tony Lama Company.

If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl? As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom. From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.

First published in 1988, Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier was acclaimed by reviewers as “superb,” “significant,” and “utterly delightful.” In this revised edition, Patrick Dearen draws upon the latest in scholarship to update his study of the Pecos River country of West Texas. It’s a land wild with tales that blend history, geography, and folklore, and from his search emerge six fascinating accounts: -Castle Gap, a break in a mesa twelve miles east of the Pecos River, used by Comanches, emigrants, stage drivers, and cattle drovers; -Horsehead Crossing, the most infamous ford of the Old West; -Juan Cordona Lake, a salt lake where sandstorms and skull-baking sun defied early efforts to mine salt vital to survival; -The “bulto” or ghost who wanders the Fort Stockton night; -Lost Wagon Train, a forty-wagon caravan buried in the sands; -The lost mine of Will Sublett, who found gold and kept its location secret unto death. Although linked by the search for treasure, the stories are as varied as the land itself. They speak eloquently of the Pecos country, its heritage, and its people.

Excerpt from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Vol. 2 A forest huge of spears and thronging helms Appear'd, and serried shields, in thick array. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"The book tells how men and women have seized common occasions and made them great; it tells of those of average ability who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose. It tells how poverty and hardship have rocked the cradle of the giants of the race. The book points out that most people do not utilize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that although working for one thing, they are really expecting something else; and it is what we expect that we tend to get."--Manybooks website

They also offer valuable analyses of battles from a participant's point of view and discuss the irony many soldiers felt when combat pitted them against men they had known before the war in business, politics, and society.