A Different War Entirely: A Novel of the Texas 1857 Cart War

Summer 1857: Towering flames rise from the giant wooden ox-carts lighting the midnight sky, valuable cargo burning. Slaughtered oxen lay dead. Hispanic cart drivers die from gunshot wounds.Before railroads connected Central Texas to the Gulf Coast, white men hauled freight between the seaports and San Antonio in mule-drawn wagons. Competing for the same trade, Hispanics carried freight along the same rutted road in huge ox-drawn two-wheeled carts. More and more businessmen protected their profits by hiring the larger, slower, but cheaper ox-carts instead of mule-drawn wagons.To regain their dominance of the Chihuahua Highway a band of angry muleskinners turn to deadly violence. In disguise, they become night raiders attacking trains of ox-carts, destroying and stealing cargo, smashing carts, killing men and beasts.After two wars with Mexico, much of the Anglo population consider the Hispanic cart trains a threat and sympathize with the night raiders. Regardless, business leaders pressure the governor of Texas to form a new company of Texas Rangers to stop the attacks. Milo McKean and Jesse Gunn once again answer the call to ride as Texas Rangers, this time to stop the marauders. A vicious "Helena knife duel', night gunfights, hangings, waylaid riverboats and inexplicably, the ownership of a string of Arabian pack-camels result.At the same time, a secretive underground railroad is aiding men who had escape enslavement on the plantations along the Colorado River. Jesse and Milo unintentionally become entangled in one such highly volatile effort and face hard choices as their moral compasses are challenged. This a tale of the Texas cart war of 1857.