Klu Klinger - The Cattle Barons

Klu Klinger – The Cattle Barons is the story of an Arkansas farm boy whose father was killed by bushwhackers. At his young age, he finds the murderers and kills them.

After avenging his father’s death, he gets his childhood friend, Shad to accompany him as he sets out West to escape the bushwhackers’ revenge and make his fortune.

Klu and Shad end up in Indian Territory, find a half-breed Choctaw named Mark Two Feathers hanging upside down in a tree and rescue him. The half-breed and the other two young men form a friendship. They gather feral cows and sell them to the two armies fighting the Civil War.

They come across two men who are going to stake out an Indian boy. Klu, Shad, Mark, and the Indian boy, Small Fox, go from one problem to another as they build a ranching operation and combat the cattle barons who think they own the Indian Territory.

The Colorado Territory is the story of the Bar TC’s move from No Man’s Land in the Indian Territory to Las Animas County in the Colorado Territory.

Before the trail drive even starts, Klu saved a white girl from Indians, had a run-in with buffalo hunters, and fought off a group of Comanche. He buys land and files homestead claims for 160 acres for each of the Bar TC crew. While on the trip, he marries Melody Rose Goodwill, the girl he rescued from the Indians.

The trail drive from No Man’s Land to Las Animas County is only about fifty-five miles. The problems they had with rustlers and Indians made the trip seem like 1,000 miles.

The remainder of the story centers around the building of the ranching operation and fighting to keep the land they have settled on.

The story illustrates the hardships, trials and tribulations of building a ranching operation in the Old West.