.Border Queen Caldwell:  Toughest Town on the Chisholm Trail
by Bill O’Neal
The Wild West thrived for more than two decades in Caldwell, Kansas. Throughout the 1870s Caldwell was a lawless, unincorporated village astride the storied Chisholm Trail. Located just north of the Kansas state line, the “Border Queen” was the first semblance of a town seen by drovers after long weeks of shoving their herds through Indian Territory. The raucous trail town offered whiskey and women to legions of dusty cowboys, while inevitably becoming the site of shootouts and lynchings.
In 1880 railroad tracks reached Caldwell, and the Border Queen boomed as the last railhead on the Chisholm Trail, succeeding Abilene, Newton, and Wichita. Shanghai Pierce, Col. Joseph G. McCoy, and other cattle kings often were seen on the streets of the Border Queen, and so were such other western notables as Charlie Siringo and young buffalo hunter Wyatt Earp. Continuing violence in Caldwell finally was tamed by city marshal Henry Brown – but Marshal Brown and his deputy were lynched after pulling a murderous bank robbery in a neighboring community.
Although the Chisholm Trail closed in 1885, for several more years Caldwell retained its cattle town status as headquarters for the Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association. And before settling into a quiet existence as a wheat farming center, Caldwell enjoyed one last Wild West adventure as a launching point for the spectacular Cherokee Strip Land Rush.

.Cheyenne: 1867 to 1903
A Biography of the "Magic City" of the Plains
by Bill O’Neal
The story of the formative period of Cheyenne is, to a remarkable degree, the story of America’s last West. Founded as a railroad boomtown, Cheyenne was a raucous and violent Hell on Wheels. Rising as if by magic from an empty prairie, Cheyenne was known the "Magic City" of the Plains. The cast of this great Western saga was colorful and imposing. Cattle barons and merchant kings. Cowboys and soldiers. Vigilantes and lawmen. Gamblers and gunfighters. The railroad brought to Cheyenne a parade of celebrities, from President Grant to Teddy Roosevelt, Wild Bill Hickok to Calamity Jane, Sarah Bernhardt to Buffalo Bill Cody. And Cheyenne was built and nurtured by such powerhouse urban pioneers as F.E. Warren and Joseph W. Carey. The Magic City was a classic product of the urban frontier.

With only the meager start of a couple of workhorses, Hank and Bobby Christensen established one of the biggest Pro Rodeo companies in the history of rodeo. And over an expanded period of time, the callused hands of the Christensen family put together one of the biggest cattle and sheep operations in the Northwest. Then, in the early 1980s, fate reared its ugly head and wiped out over fifty years of hard work and success achieved by the famous Christensens.
  This rollicking history bridges four generations of a legendary family with roots planted in the very soil that grew America.

In the early 1890s Wyoming’s northern rangeland was torn by the Johnson County War, a violent western collision which pitted cattle barons and powerful politicians against homesteaders and rustlers. The range war, riddled with lynchings, ambushes, and an invasion by hired Texas gunmen, culminated in a valiant last stand and a siege involving hundreds of combatants. These explosive events have captivated novelists, filmmakers, and historians for more than a century, inspiring such classics as The Virginian and Shane.

 CAPTAIN HARRY WHEELER
                Arizona Lawman
                 By Bill O’Neal

THE LETTERS OF JOHN WESLEY HARDIN
Transcribed by Roy and Jo Ann Stamps
A total of 281 personal letters from the legendary John Wesley Hardin, and from his wife, family, and closest friends, organized and transcribed by the authors from the special collections at the Albert B. Alkek Library at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. Special permission was granted to use these letters in the book. The letters begin September 8, 1876, to his wife, Jane, and end July 28, 1895, with a letter to Hardin from his friend J.D. Hargis. The letters are all reproduced as written, with misspellings and the language of the day. The text opens with a brief biography of Hardin, who began his killing spree at the age of fifteen. Most of the letters were written from the Huntsville penitentiary, where Hardin spent more than fifteen years. He was shot to death in El Paso in a gun battle with Constable John Selman. 

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JUAN COY
Outlaw & Lawman 
by Charles L. Olmsted           Edward Coy Ybarra
The West was still wild in South Texas in the 1880s and 1890s for a rich Anglo landowner and a Mexican hired gun-outlaw-lawman. The authors explore a shoot-out that was more explosive than the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in a town that no longer exists. The Coy family was always involved with the law, and especially Juan Coy, who by his own accounts gunned down at least thirty-three opponents. Coy earned his hard reputation after the Civil War during the turbulent Reconstruction period. It followed him through brushes with the law and his lifelong friendship with the Butler family from Karnes County.