TEXAN ON THE PROD [West of the Wide Missouri] by Philip Ketchum

THERE WAS NO POSSIBILITY OF BEN COMING THROUGH ALIVE!

“A writer of excellent western novels Ketchum’s plots were usually much more realistic than the formula fiction common in westerns. His characters were drawn with greater depth, quirks and flaws included. His novels were also noted for the inclusion of strong, independent women in important roles.” -Richard A. Moore, Internet Movie Database

Ben Rogan's dream of independence came to an end, after four years of back breaking labor and constant self-denial. The brood mares, the stallions, the horses which should have been there, were gone. Rustlers had hit the ranch while he had been on a trip to Fort Stanton to arrange a sale of remounts to the army. Tired from almost a week in the saddle, scouring the Mescalero hills south toward El Paso, in search of any trail of the rustlers, he stared bleakly at the empty corrals in the meadows.

Clara Bane was a woman, but in business matters she was as shrewd as any man. She could be generous or hard, and in this instance there was no point in being generous. Ben owed her bank fifteen hundred dollars. It would take five thousand more and a year of work to put him back in business, and he had no guarantees to offer that at the end of that time rustlers wouldn’t hit him again.

Jinny Halstead was a thin girl, not very tall, just over twenty. Sam Halstead had left the Grand Mesa to his daughter, and there wasn’t a job on it she couldn’t do. She could ride, rope, herd cattle. She could use a gun if she had to. During the past five years, since her mother’s death, she had been her father’s almost constant saddle companion. She knew ranching and nothing else. When Arne Macgregor pressed her to sell, she refused. She could run this ranch if people would leave her alone, give her a chance. Why should she sell out and go to her father’s people in Texas, people she hardly knew?

Arne Macgregor stood well over six feet and weighed close to two hundred and forty pounds. He was nearing fifty, but didn’t show it. His hair was still thick and black. He still stood erect. He could spend a day in the saddle and have more energy left at nightfall than many a younger man who rode for him. He had come here a dozen years before, driving five hundred head of cattle and with less than fifty dollars in his pocket, according to his boast. He had settled on the flat lands south of the Grand Mesa and in the years since, had built up the largest ranch in this part of the country. He had become, in any matter of local politics, a man to be considered. Arne had coveted the mesa for a long time. The mesa and its rich stand of timber. Macgregor had never liked Ben, never liked any man who bucked him.

Clara told Ben she would back him financially if he was willing to buck Arne Macgregor. But Ben wondered she realized all that a range war entailed. She had never lived through one. He took his time weighing the proposition Clara Bane had made. It was a quick way to make money, if he lived through it. It would save Jinny Halstead’s ranch if he could beat Arne Macgregor. He owed Macgregor nothing. There was no reason not to take the job. In protecting and defending the Halstead ranch, he would be operating within the law. Everything was on his side - everything excepting the possibility of coming through it alive.

“Bare-knuckle action.” —Baltimore Sun