From Roland's Bookstore
Lincoln County Crucible
This story opens after the terrible Lincoln gun battle where Alexander McSween and many of his partisans perish. The notorious "Santa Fe Ring," a crooked triumvirate composed of elements of the United States Army, Territorial government, and extortionistic merchants are in near-total control of Southeastern New Mexico. Young Jethro is undecided about staying in the country or riding into the sunset. His head tells him a man with a price on his own head should drift on. But what of the widowed Susan McSween? Or of his friend, Billy the Kid? Or of the starving Mescalero Apaches? Or of the poor Anglo and Mexican farmers strangling from the "Ring's" bloody yoke? It was Jethro Spring's
Lincoln County Crucible
5-1/2 X 8-1/2 12-pt. cover 288 pages $16.95
Roland and Jane Cheek spent many weeks in Southeastern New Mexico studying the land and its flora and fauna, reading old texts and newspapers from the era, trying to get an accurate "feel" for the human elements charging that history with such dynamism and color
3rd book in the
Valediction for Revenge series
Tom Lawrence, former editor of the Whitefish Pilot, an excellent weekly newspaper carrying Roland's column, once asked how he could so accurately portray Southeastern New Mexico in the two Lincoln County books, Bloody Merchants' War and Lincoln County Crucible? Tom, it seems, had lived in that portion of the Land of Enchantment and also knew the Lincoln County story intimately. Roland's reply: "Research, Tom. Is there any other way?"
Tales of the West that Was
and the West that Is
(or send check or money order for $16.95 to Roland Cheek, P.O. Box 1118, Columbia Falls, MT 59912)
