The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier (Paperback or Softback)

Pete Rose is a fine interpreter of our American past...[drawing] from geology, history, ethnography,sociology, and environmental science to help us understand how the land and those whoinhabited it influenced each other.-Scott Zesch, author of The Captured: A True Story ofAbduction by Indians on the Texas FrontierIn 1873, opportunistic Anglo-Celtic cattlemen and homesteaders, protected by littleother than personal firearms and their own bravado, began settling the stream-lacedrangelands east of the plateau. An insidious criminal element soon followed: a family-basedtribal confederation of frontier outlaws took root in the canyonlands aroundthe forks of the Llano River, in unorganized and lawless Kimble County. Sometimesdisguised as Indians, they preyed on neighbors, northbound trail herds, and stockmenin adjacent counties. They robbed stagecoaches repeatedly. They traded in border marketsalongside Mexican Indian raiders, and may have participated in the brutal Dowdymassacre of 1878. Outnumbering and intimidating law-abiding settlers, this criminalconfederation took over the nascent Kimble County government in 1876. Only doggedpersistence by Texas Rangers, with increasing support from citizens and local law officers,would stem the tide.