Six-Horse Hitch (The Kentuckians #10)

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969. 1st Edition. Hardcover_cloth. VeryGood/VeryGood. Bryant, Samuel Hanks. FIFTH PRINTING. 5.75"X8.63"436 numbered pages. Bright gold cloth boards. Dk gold title block w/black letters under stage coach on front. Matching title block on spine. Great Overland Stage Routes map for paste downs. Spine straight, sewn binding tight, pages clean w/tone. X-library w/graphics, DJ in mylar, unclipped (price), library envelope was removed. 1" tear in bottom gutter. Ghost stickers on boards. Moderate edge wear. Secure ship w/track #. Starr Fowler was only nineteen when he climbed into the box of a main-line stage and threaded the reins of a six-horse hitch between his fingers. This was the beginning of his career as a stagefaring man on the great Overland Mail and Stage Line, whose Concord coaches drawn by the fast-paced and beautifully matched teams of four and six horses, ran from Missouri to the Pacific. The time was 1859, when the discovery of gold in California and Colorado turned the land beyond the Missouri into the "Golden West" and stage lines competed for the fat postal subsidies to the new territories and states. The lives of these fictional characters are skillfully interwoven with such historical figures as the stage-line "king," Ben Holladay, the drivers of the Overland, and Jack Slade, division agent turned outlaw, one of the first true gunmen of the West... Publisher.