National Network for Equitable Library Service

Two young men come to the forbidding desert at the foot of Black Mesa. Paul Manning, a would-be writer from Kansas City, is running from memories that haunt him.

Ernest Selby inherits Red Rock Ranch, but when he learns the herd has shrunk from 20,000 head to only 6,000 he suspects foul play.

"He'd rope the devil and tie him down-if the lasso didn't burn," it was said of Buffalo Jones, one of the last of the famous plainsmen who trod the trails of the Old West.

The story follows an ancient feud between two frontier families that is inflamed when one of the families takes up cattle rustling.

Written shortly after he became Biship of Hippo, "Confessions" highlights Augustine's childhood in Numidia and his riotous youth and early manhood in Carthage, Rome, and Milan.