Brush Country

Barbed Wire, the first novel in this omnibus, is the story of one-time cowboy Doug Monahan, who runs a fencing crew outside the town of Twin Wells. Monahan, a likeable, hard-working Irishman, and his workers dig post-holes and string red painted barb wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry cattle barons.

Their fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range cowman of the huge R Cross spread. With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann—who does the violent work of chasing squatters off the range—Rinehart wages a barb wire war against Doug Monahan.

A second colorful tale of the brush country is Llano River. Dundee, a onetime cowboy, one of Monahan's fencing crew in Barbed Wire, wanders into the town of Titusville, broke, tired, and itching for a fight. Town patriarch John Titus hires Dundee to find out who is rustling his cattle, but he already has a culprit in mind—Blue Roan Hardesty. Once a friend, now a sworn enemy of the powerful Titus clan, Hardesty is Titus's choice for villain—but Dundee is determined to find out the truth, even if it costs him his job.


Genre: Western