Captain's Rangers

It was a place called the Nueces Strip, a land lying between two rivers that bordered Texas and Mexico. It was the spring of 1875 and even though by treaty this land belong to Texas, the troubles in this sliver of land had reached the breaking point. So, Captain McNelly and his rangers were sent to "clean up" the Strip. McNelly was a real person, and Mr. Kelton uses him as he often does in his historically based books. Originally Captain's Rangers was published in February 1969 as a Ballantine Western--an Original Publication. This was the time when Elmer Kelton was beginning to really make a name for himself. And even as that was happening, he never changed how he wrote a story. And 99 percent of the time he never missed a beat in the quality of his prose. He does so here

You have to read the whole Texas Ranger story starting with the Buckskin Line. This is a fantastic written by a Texan who knows his stuff.

Thirty years after the Texans defeated Santa Anna's Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, the area in far Southwest Texas betwen the Nueces river and the Rio Grande was still a virtual battleground between Texans and Mexicans. Texans claimed the area by virtue of the treaty ending the conflict with Mexico, and Mexican settlers claimed the area because the land had been in their families for generations. As usual, Kelton brings a great sense of place and local dialogue to this novel. The settings and people around which the action takes place are, in many instances, drawn directly from the pages of Texas history.Lanham Neal, a Confederate vetran wounded in his first and last battle against the Yankees, had finally settled in as "caporal" at the small ranch run by Griffin Daingerfield and his daughter Zoe. While Lanham, Zoe, and some ranch hands were away from the ranch house rounding up and branding their cattle, Mexican guerillas crossed the border, killed Griffin Daingerfield and others, and burned the ranch buildings to the ground. Neal found himself in the middle of the conflict. He must balance his priorities between his love and loyalty to Zoe, her insistence on revenge for the death of her father, and his own conscience. Eventually Captain L.H. McNelly and his small company of Texas Rangers enter the scene with orders to bring law and order to the territory regardless of the price in lives and property and the action excalates.This novel is part of a series of "Tales of Texas." Anyone reading this book will gain an interesting insight into this violent time in Texas history.