Elmer Kelton was born in West Texas in 1926. The place of his birth sounds like a fictional setting: the Horse Camp on the Scharbauer Cattle Company's Five Wells Ranch in Andrews County. His father, R. W. "Buck" Kelton, was a cowboy on the McElroy Ranch, and his grandfather was the ranch foreman. His greatgrandfather had moved to West Texas Cloudy in the West 4523 in about 1876, bringing from East Texas a string of horses with which he intended to become a rancher, but he died early, leaving his four sons to earn their keep as working cowboys.

Elmer Kelton remarks that with such a heritage he should have become a good cowboy himself. Somehow, though, he did not; instead he writes about cowboys and rural life in the West.

Kelton was raised in Crane, Texas, where he graduated from Crane High School in 1942 and then...