Six Bits a Day

The year is 1889. Hewey Calloway and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm 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—seventy-five cents—a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching C.C. Tarpley. Fun-loving and whiskey-drinking Hewey 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?

Elmer Kelton's Hewey Calloway Novels

The Smiling Country (#1)

The Good Old Boys (#2)

Six Bits a Day (#3)

The Unlikely Lawman (#4)