Stake Your Claim

Author: Arnold Cross

ISBN 978-1-947532-52-6 (softcover)

334 pages

Cattle rustlers and Indians were some of the problems Garfield Ragland encountered on his way to Texas.

Ragland had sold his cattle farm in England and come to America to establish a cattle ranch in the New World. He wanted to settle in Virginia, but there was no land available in all of that beautiful state.

He met and hired Virgil Smith in Hampton, Va. Together they and men Ragland hired on the way arrived in St. Louis just in time for the last wagon train going to Texas.

When they arrived in Abilene Ragland got a land grant for his ranch. While he and his men were building the bunkhouse and other outbuildings, Henry Adams, a neighboring rancher came and lent Ragland some of his men to help build.

Virgil, Ragland’s range boss, was shot twice; other men were injured and some were killed. Someone was trying to run off the ranchers so they could take over the land.

But as they fought off the bandits and rustlers they brought in hay for the winter; calves were born in late winter; cattle were driven to market; and love was in the air.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arnold Cross grew up riding a horse in the Cumberland Mountains of East Tennessee. He also plowed the fields with the same horse and a mule. At 20 he joined the Air Force where he spent the next 20 years. When he’s not building mandolins or splitting wood he loves reading westerns, especially Louis L’amour.