Cattlemen Vs. Sheepherders

Book excerpt: ?...an engrossing tale that encompasses a variety of hostilities across the entire West.?Fred Egloff, BooklistFrom the 1870s until the 1920s cattlemen and sheepmen clashed bitterly for rangeland in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. During five decades of irregular but vicious warfare, scores of attacks were launched by cattlemen, at least twenty-eight sheepmen and sixteen cowboys were killed, and more than 53,000 sheep were shot, clubbed, knifed, poisoned, dynamited and rimrocked. There were 120 raids and skirmishes across the West, including famous events such as the Pleasant Valley War, the murder of Willie Nickell, the Diamondfield Jack trial and the brutal Ten Sleep tragedy, and involving gunfighters Tom Horn and Commodore Perry Owens, cattle baron Charles Goodnight, and other frontier notables. The fifty-year conflict was waged in a magnificent arena of mountains and plains, a classic story of murderous aggression and retribution that forms one of the great dramas of Western history. Bill O?Neal has traveled throughout the West to collect information and background material, and his fast-paced Cattlemen vs. Sheepherders is the first book-length account of this long and bloody war.