Bad Blood: The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers

Stillwater, Oklahoma, U.S.A.: Barbed Wire Press, 1994. First Edition . Hard Back. Near Fine/Very Good. 6 1/4" x 9 1/4. Reed, Kelly A - Book Design. 210 Pages Indexed. Tight book with no defects. Interior text pages are near flawless. Dust jacket is brightly colored but has some wear around the edges and some scuffs that are difficult to see in the scans. With deeds of violence and vengeance, the seven Horrell brothers burned their names into the history books of Texas and New Mexico in the 1870s. The son of early immigrants to Lampasas, Texass they were Texans by birth, raised to horses, cattle, whiskey, and guns. Their iron wills were forged in flames of the lawless frontier, hammered on the anvil of the Civil War, and tempered in the waters of Reconstruction and the Indian Wars. With Texas seething under the rule of carpetbag Governor Edmund J. Davis, the Horrell brothers gained a reputation as troublemakers, finally shooting their way out of a gun battle that left three state police officers dead and a fourth mortally wounded. The family fled to Lincoln County, New Mexico. There they became embroiled in a deadly dispute with Lawrence G. Murphy, William Brady, and the local Hispanic population that erupted into a minor war, a precursor to the next decade's famous Lincoln County War. Ben Horrell's body was among those the clan left behind as they retreated back to Texas in an orgy of theft and killing. In Lampasas again, the family returned to the cattle business and lived peacefully for a time. Then they locked horns with Paul Higgins, a local rancher and a bad man to tangle with. The resulting Higgins-Horrell vendetta was among Texas' deadliest and most famous family feuds. One on of the Horrell brothers would survive the bloodshed. When he died in 1936, the full story of the family's bloodstained life and times was buried with him. Author Frederick Nolan tells it here for the first time.