Books published by publisher Bonanza Pub

Great-grandfather has witnessed so much change in his life. When he was a boy the horse and buggy was the mode of transportation. He has lived to see aviation progress from a few barnstorming pilots hop-scotching across the country to jet aircraft thundering across the sky. And he was sitting there that day, in front of the television, when men walked on the moon. All the years and hard work have taken their toll but when he is seated in his favorite rocking chair, great-grandchildren scattered at his feet, his eyes sparkle as lively as they must have in his youth. He exuberantly recounts the past, painting vivid pictures of his life on the western frontier as a pioneer, miner, freighter, stage driver, Indian fighter, trapper, homesteader, logger, buckaroo .... The story over, he waits, and then a small voice implores, 'Grandpa, tell us another story, please.' Grandpa grins, 'Well, all right. Once a long, looong, looooong time ago....'

The men who ride the open range of the far West are known under a variety of names: vaquero, range rider, mustanger and buckaroo, but the name most commonly known is cowboy. The nature of a cowboy's work demands independence and toughness. He is a man of action; yet the long, lonely hours spent in the saddle provide ample time to develop a unique outlook on life. Simply put, a cowboy's tenet is, 'What cannot be cured is endured.' And endured with cheerfulness and good humor. It is far better to joke about the droughts, windstorms, blizzards, outlaw mustangs and loco cattle than to complain. The cowboy would never have existed without his horse. Like the cowboy, the horse is referred to by an assortment of names: mustang, bronco, cayuse and, sometimes, jughead, broomtail, nag, hay burner, plug and other even less complimentary epithets. The ancestors of the western horse date back to the animals brought to America by Cortez and the conquistadores. As the Spanish mounts escaped, were lost or stolen, the horse began its phenomenal spread across western North America. The high desert was first settled by daring stockmen who drove in foundation herds, numbering in the thousands. The cattle thrived on the native grasses and when the steers were ready for market, cowboys on horseback drove them to railroad towns in the Midwest. With the invention of barbed wire in 1874 and an influx of homesteaders who claimed waterholes and divided up the range, the heyday of the big outfits and their cowboys passed into history. But as long as there is open sky, rimrock, bunch grass, sagebrush and juniper, cowboys will still ride the range.

The first white children to come west were sons and daughters of the pioneers. They trudged barefooted beside the wagons, across the dusty plains, through the heat and the prickly pear cactus and over the mountains of sharp volcarlic rocks. Some never made it and piles of stones and improvised crosses marked their graves. Those who survived found a wonderful playground out west. A playground of bright-colored rocks, slow-moving streams, wide-open spaces and deep, dark forests. Mothers watched over their young because if a child wandered away, he or she might be carried off by a wild animal or stolen by lndians. Children of the frontier were seasoned to a hard life. They had to be strong and resilient and were forced to grow up quickly. By the time a boy was eight or nine he knew how to handle a rifle and hunted wild game for meat. He helped his father clear land, split rails, build fence and farm with a team of horses. Girls worked beside their mothers, picking wild berries, making lye soap, rendering hogs, washing on a scrub board, cooking over a woodstove.... The list of time- consuming chores went on and on. By the time a girl was fourteen or fifteen she was ready to marry and start a family of her own and the circle of life continued.

According to popular theory the first inhabitants of north America arrived during the last Ice Age. Between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago people are believed to have crossed from Asia to North America on a natural land bridge, where the Aleutian Island chain now exists. These people migrated south, hunting mastadons and mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels and long-horned bisons. They ate the meat and used the hide for clothing and shelter. Their weapons consisted of rocks and obsidian-tipped spears. In time the atlatl, a device used to throw spears or darts, was developed. It was not until about 3,000 years ago that the bow and arrow was introduced to North America. On the eve of the white man's arrival the population of North America, divided among 500 tribes, was estimated to exceed one million. But the Europeans brought with them diseases from which the native people had no natural immunity and plagues of smallpox, fever, tuberculosis, measles and venereal disease swept through the Indian nations with devastating results. Ninety percent of the people died: entire tribes were wiped off the face of the earth. Those who remained were rounded up and placed on reservations. The way of life they had known for countless centuries was doomed.

Early-day women of the West are depicted in fading photographs: a gaunt, bonneted figure in a long dress walking beside a wagon, baby cradled in her arms, children scattered behind, a woman, looking older than her years, stirring lye soap over an open fire, a dancehall girl on stage, miners watching her every move.... Letters and diaries tell the details of these women's existence, the sorrow of being uprooted from family and friends, the yearning for companionship of other women, bearing children without the benefit of a doctor and trying to rear them in an uncivilized land. One turn-of-the-century, Western historian noted, 'With the coming of woman came also the graces of life, better social order and conditions, and increased regard for the amenities of life.' Eastern women were relegated to conduct themselves within strictly-established social boundaries. Western women were allowed more freedom to stretch their wings and explore the realm of their existence. And in the process they tamed the wild West.

Born into every generation are a few restless souls who long for adventure. In the early 1800s this wild breed became mountain men who headed up the Missouri, crossed the Rock-ies and continued west, hunting, trapping and exploring as they went. One mountainman,reflecting the general attitude of the day, wrote, 'We found the richest place for beaver we had yet come across, and it took us forty days to clean that section.' Valley by valley, stream by stream, the mountain men eliminated the beaver. They reasoned they would never pass that way again and, anyway, why should they leave fur for the competition? A typical mountain man had grown up in Kentucky, Virginia or Tennessee hunting squirrels, deer, coon and turkey gobblers. When civilization pressed in he escaped, in search of places no white man had been. Where beaver were plentiful and would come easily to his traps. Where there were no property lines. No neighbors. No boundaries. Where he could come and go as he pleased and the world, as far as the eye could see, was his. The heyday of the mountain men spanned only a few short decades. By the 1840s wagon pioneers were flooding into the West. And the free-roaming mountain men disappeared.

Logging in North America began with the arrival of European colonists in the 1600s. In a few short decades there were water-powered sawmills scattered up and down the eastern seaboard with the main concentration in northern New England. The lumber was used to build ships, furniture, kegs and barrels, buggies and wagons. As the loggers cleared areas in the forest, others arrived to farm the ground.It took 200 years for the timber to be logged from the eastern seaboard. The loggers and lumbermen moved inland to the Great Lakes region and when they had high graded the timber there, they continued west to northern California and the Pacific Northwest.Lumberman Samuel Wilkeson wrote in 1869, on viewing the Western forests for the first time, 'Oh! What timber! These trees so enchain the sense of the grand and so enchant the sense of the beautiful that I am loth to depart. Forests in which you cannot ride a horse - forests into which you cannot see, and which are almost dark under a bright midday sun - such forests containing firs, cedars, pine, spruce and hemlock - forests surpassing the woods of all the rest of the globe in their size, quantity and quality of the timber. Here can be found great trees, monarchs to whom all worshipful men inevitably lift their hats.'

Rick Steber began writing the Tales of the Wild West stories in 1973 for his syndicated newspaper column. He gathers information from personal interviews and research journals, diaries, logs, letters, newspapers and books. To gain a pioneer's perspective he has hiked the Oregon Trail and paddled a canoe from the wilderness to the mouth of the Columbia River. As he travels the country gleaning material, Rick has gained an understanding of and deep personal feeling for the people and the landscape of the West.