Hard Trail to Follow (Fiction)
Elmer Kelton
Categories: Book Reviews
By: William Garwood 03/01/2008
Forge, $23.95, Hardcover.
This is the tale of three “prisoners” and the hunt for an escapee. Andy Pickard, an ex-Comanche captive known as Badger Boy, glumly labors for his injured Texas Ranger partner. At the town’s lockup, burly badman Luther Cordell schemes to recover gold he robbed with fellow Owl Hoot Will Haycroft. He escapes with the help of Haycroft, who shoots the sheriff during his raid to free his partner. Wrongly fingered as the sheriff’s killer, Cordell rides west to meet Haycroft with the recovered loot. Pickard finds the trail so hard to follow, it fades away. Eventually, Pickard’s dogged trail crosses both Cordell’s and Haycroft’s. As guns blaze, Badger Boy must decide a fugitive’s fate. Many stories have been penned of “the good bad man,” but Kelton has written one of the best!
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