Code of the West

About the Book

Rags Bandy, a lanky old arthritic cowboy, returns to the upper Arkansas River Valley of Colorado where he worked as a young cowboy on his late uncle's ranch. Surprisingly the present owners hire him to work on the ranch near the Chalk Cliffs and Mt. Princeton. He strikes up a deep friendship with a young woman (Sarah Caldwell), three other aged cowboys (Tom Longworth, Billy Sidler and Carl Banner), the young cowboys working on the ranch as well as the owners and their attractive aunt. As he settles into his job the idyllic atmosphere is interrupted by a bank robbery and the kidnapping of Rags' young woman friend. With FBI agents chasing a false lead, local law enforcement officers stumped by the thieves escape, Rags and Cody Banner, who is in love with Sarah, undertake the chase. Unrelenting pursuit by Rags results in gun play, accidents, murder and humorous episodes leading to the eventual capture of the bank robbers and kidnappers.

About the Author

Prize winning poet and editor, Vernon Schmid is a member of Western Writers of America and author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry including Watie's Wolves, More Houlihans and Horse, and Cherokee Myth and Legend. His first novel, Seven Days of the Dog, was a Heekin Group fiction finalist and his play Last Letter from Bitter was a workshop selection at the Baltimore Playwrights Competition. A 2004 nominee for Maryland Poet Laureate, over 2,000 of his articles, columns, poems and short stories have been published in the U.S., Canada and England. His National Foundation Quarter Horse Journal column "Horse Sense" reaches readers in all fifty states and twenty-four foreign countries. He lives in northeast Maryland where he and his wife, Susan, enjoy their horses, cats, dog and two daughters, not necessarily in that order.