A writer once denounced the Lone Star State as "where the Godly could battle 'the devil' on his own ground." Circuit riders and other early preachers confronted dangerous outlaws, Indians, wild animals, and Texas' unpredictable weather. Their stories chronicle bringing one element of civilization to early explorers and settlers. Some fought for Texas independence with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other; others worked as drovers and preached along the cattle trails. One served as a deputy sheriff; others, as fort chaplains. European immigrant ministers and Negro preachers formed an unlikely mix in East Texas. The frontier lured them into all the danger, adventure, and challenge of others who faced the "devil in Texas." Circuit riders had preached to all regions of Texas before they "hung up their spurs and went to the camp meeting in the sky."
In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these “nesters.” In August 1902 a famous hired assassin, Jim Miller, ambushed and murdered J. W. Jarrott. Who hired Miller? This crime has never been solved, until now. Award-winning author Bill Neal investigates this cold case and successfully pieces together all the threads of circumstantial evidence to fit the noose snugly around the neck of Jim Miller’s employer. What emerges from these pages is the strength of intriguing characters in an engrossing narrative: Jim Jarrott, the diminutive advocate who fearlessly champions the cause of the little guy. The ruthless and slippery assassin, Deacon Jim Miller. And finally Jarrott’s young widow Mollie, who perseveres and prospers against great odds and tells the settlers to “Stay put!”
ON THE WESTERN TRAIL, the seventh book in the Western Quest Series, follows the rough and tumble life of Aaron Lloyd Turner as the burgeoning cattle business reaches its zenith and gradual decline to something more like what we know today. Aaron and his friends hit their stride in the cattle business busting maverick cattle out of the wild lands along the far reaches of the Colorado River at the very edge of frontier Texas and driving the wild hardy longhorns up the newly opened Western Trail to Dodge City, Kansas, the Babylon of the Plains. They battled Indians and nature itself to get there. But change was already in the wind. Windmills and water wells expanded the vast areas of previously unusable prairie to grazing. Barbed wire established boundaries of ownership and made gathering far-flung herds a thing of the past. It also gave the cattlemen the opportunity to fence good English bulls with their longhorns resulting in much better and earlier maturing animals. But the final nail in the coffin of the wild and wooly days of the cattle drive was the arrival of the railroad across Texas. Cattle drives that had taken three or four months could be made in a one to a few days. New towns, such as Abilene, Texas, replaced Dodge City. The ever adaptable Aaron was a leader in implementing these changes and establishing for generations yet unborn a new type of sustainable ranching in Texas. Aaron also comes into his own as a man. He discovers his inner strength and values and his natural leadership shines through, even as he wrestles with inner demons. He meets and marries, Ella, the love of his life. Finding a foundation that will sustain him through his long life, he rediscovers a relationship with God as a grown man, replacing the war shattered doubts of his youth. STEPHEN L. TURNER is a fifth generation Texan, sixth generation Arkansan and eighth generation American. He is a graduate of Texas Tech School of Medicine, and has worked as a pediatrician in rural Plainview, Texas since 1984. He is married with two married children. Injuries have forced his retirement from ranching and training horses. He is a member of Sons of the Confederacy, Hood’s Texas Brigade Association, the Texas Genealogical Society, and the Western Writers of America. He is also the author of OUT OF THE WILDERNESS, ON THE CAMINO REAL, UNDER TROUBLED SKIES, RIDE FOR THE LONE STAR, ON THE ROAD TO GLORY, and UP FROM THE ASHES, all from Sunstone Press.
