Kiowa Trail A Novel [Paperback]

Kate Lundy, owner of the Tumbling B, and Conn Dury, her foreman, told Tom the rules: men from the cattle drives are forbidden on the north side of town. People appreciated the money the cowboys spent but thought them too coarse to be near their homes. Enticed to come calling by Linda McDonald, daughter of one of the leading citizens, Tom Lundy broke the law and crossed the line. Later that night, he was dead.

Outraged by her brother’s murder, Kate vows to destroy the entire town. But when Aaron McDonald sends east for an army of hired guns, Conn Dury and the men of the Tumbling B soon wonder if the price of Kate’s revenge is too high.Our foremost storyteller of the American West,Louis L’Amourhas thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world.Chapter One


WE CAME UP the trail from Texas in the spring of '74, and bedded our herd on the short grass beyond the railroad. We cleaned our guns and washed our necks and dusted our hats for town, riding fifteen strong to the hitching rail and standing fifteen strong to the bar.

We were the Tumbling B from the rough country of the Big Bend, up the trail with three thousand head of longhorn steers, the first that spring, although the rivers ran bank-full and Comanches rode the war trail.

We had buried two hands south of the Red and one on the plains of the Nation. A fourth had died on Kansas grass, his flesh churned under a thousand tearing hoofs. Two men had fallen before Comanche rifles, but the Comanches sang their death songs in the light of a hollow moon, and the Kiowas mourned in their lodges for warriors who fell before the guns of the Tumbling B.

The town to which we had come was ten buildings long on the north side of the street, and seven long on the south, with stock corrals to the east, and a Boot Hillls5