Six Bits a Day

by Elmer Kelton

Overview

"Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country.

The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits—75 cents—a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching C.C. Tarpley. Hewey, who “usually accepted the vagaries of life without getting his underwear in a twist”, is fun-loving and whiskey-drinking. He spends every penny he earns and regularly gets into trouble with his boss—and occasionally with the law—often dragging innocent Walter along.

When Walter falls in love with a boarding house girl and begins dreaming of a farmer's life, Hewey jumps at the chance to rescue him from this fate worse than death. He convinces Walter to join him on a mission for Tarpley, driving 600 head of cattle from beyond San Antonio to the Double-C ranch on the Pecos.

The journey is both memorable and dangerous: a murderous outlaw is searching for Hewey; and another ruthless character is determined to sabotage the cattle drive. When the drovers reach the Pecos they find Boss Tarpley in the midst of a vicious range feud with Eli Jessup, a neighboring cowman. Hewey and his brother Walter have to get the herd safely across Jessup's land-but how?

The events of Six Bits a Day precede those of Kelton's bestselling The Good Old Boys (1978, transformed into the memorable 1995 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek), and The Smiling Country (Forge, 1998).

"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798885781657
Publisher:	Gale, A Cengage Company
Publication date:	11/09/2022
Series:	A Hewey Calloway Adventure , #3
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	391
Sales rank:	486,431
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elmer Kelton, author of more than forty novels, grew up on a ranch near Crane, Texas, and earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas. His first novel, Hot Iron, was published in 1956. For forty-two years he had a parallel career in agricultural journalism.

Among his awards have been seven Spurs from Western Writers of America and four Western Heritage awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Among his best-known works have been The Time It Never Rained and The Good Old Boys, the latter made into a television film starring Tommy Lee Jones.

He served in the infantry in World War II. He and his wife, Ann, a native of Austria, live in San Angelo, Texas. They have three children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Editorial Reviews

Hewey Calloway is a fun-loving cowboy who can't shoot straight; his younger brother, Walter, is a serious cowboy who, much to Hewey's horror, wants to marry a pretty girl and become a farmer. Both are looking for a job and a meal in 1889 West Texas. After being mistaken for rustlers and rescued from hanging by a friendly Texas Ranger (a terrific character from another Kelton series), the boys hire on with Mr. C.C. Tarpley's cattle ranch, working for six bits-75 cents-a day. Hewey volunteers them both to drive cattle from San Antonio back to Tarpley's ranch on the Pecos, hoping Walter will forget his fanciful notions. The trip has its share of excitement, but when their Texas Ranger friend asks for help in capturing a hard-boiled case, Hewey gets real nervous. Add some clever cattle stealing back on the Pecos, a range feud between two stubborn cattle barons, rival gangs of cowboys who would rather get drunk together and let their bosses fist-fight, and some of Hewey's pranks, and Kelton, who has more than 40 westerns to his credit, is riding high again. Not much six-gun action, but Hewey's smart mouth more than makes up for the lack of gunsmoke. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

One of the last cowboys still riding through American fiction moseys through Texas, and gets into trouble. Having detailed the latter-day escapades of Texas cowpuncher Hewey Calloway in previous novels (The Smiling Country, 1998, etc.), Kelton now heads back to 1889 for a look at Hewey and his brother Walter in their younger days. The two are wandering the vast West Texas landscape when they fall in with a couple of cowboys who turn out to be rustlers. Never that smart, Hewey informs on the rustlers, earning their enmity. But there's little time to worry about that, as the Calloway brothers find themselves working hard for skinflint rancher C.C. Tarpley, earning just six bits a day (that's 75 cents to city folk). This arrangement is just fine by Hewey, who wants nothing more than a good horse, some grub and nobody bossing him around. But Walter has fallen in love with a girl from the nearby town. The entanglement is more than a little irksome to Hewey, who barely hesitates before signing his brother and himself up for a long ride down to San Antonio to bring back a herd of cattle that C.C. just bought-anything to get out in the open country and keep Walter away from the girl. It's a nice lengthy ride, with more than a few mishaps along the way, but nothing that Hewey and dumb luck can't handle. Easygoing days in the saddle, related in a drawl that's sweet as pure honey. One has to appreciate a Western whose hero is so bad with a revolver that he couldn't hit water if he was standing knee deep in a lake.

Kirkus Reviews