Publisher's Synopsis
COWBOYS AND WIDOWS is a collection of five Old West short stories by author Herb Marlow. Each story contains a widow and a cowboy, and lots of excitement! Long Valley begins the book following the adventures of Chip Morton, a drifting cowboy who invests in a widow's ranch at the edge of the Texas Caprock. Next we follow Marshal James Harding to a tough trail town in Kansas where he takes care of the local bad boys, collecting a bullet that almost ends his career, but instead ends with his hand in that of the Widow Hastings. The third story, Beyond Fort Belknap, includes a widow and her pretty daughter who agree to cook for a bunch of rough men catching wild horses in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. In Three Mules for Widow Malone, Miles Laney takes three mules to the Malone Freight Yard in Abilene, Texas for friend of his on the Waggoner Ranch outside Wichita Falls, Texas. Once there he decides to stay in partners with the attractive Widow Malone, and then they decide to make the partnership permanent. The last story, Prodigal's Return, is about a man returning to his home town after ten years of being away. John Hand, now a gold mine owner in Colorado, didn't have good memories of Carter, Illinois, but his dying mother lived there. Coming back to see her in her last days he renewed an acquaintance with Mary Cummings, now Widow Miller. When he leaves town after seeing to his mother's funeral, he takes the comely widow with him, now wearing his ring and last name.
