A man either chases his dreams, or he dies. Present-day ranch hand Charlie Lyles longs for an era before mechanization, when a cowboy’s greatest ally was his horse. He remembers stories of cattle drives and stampedes and shallow graves in lonesome country. Society has pushed Charlie toward a conformity that he hates, but he is about to change the rules. At a remote line shack in West Texas, he steals a horse, leaving a perfectly good pickup behind. His theft leads to a manhunt with a helicopter and assault weapons, but his trackers are headed into territory that hasn’t changed in a century … and they are trailing a man born a hundred years too late.

A Spur Award finalist, When Cowboys Die has been acclaimed as spellbinding and an instant classic. This new volume, the first print edition in twenty-five years, includes a preface and Requiem for a Cowboy, a documented account of the 1976 Texas manhunt that inspired the novel.