Setting up shop in rip-roaring Spanish Fort, Texas, in the early 1870s, Big Eddie Hager outfitted many cowboys in boots as they headed up the Chisholm Trail. Hager's fame and his company grew with the years, turning Hager Boots & Company, Incorporated, into a global legend. But when a Dallas newspaper reporter arrives in what's left of Spanish Fort, an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the man behind the Hager legend-the real cobbler of Spanish Fort. The Cobbler of Spanish Fort, published for the first time, kicks off this collection of short fiction by Johnny D. Boggs, the most awarded writer in the history of Western Writers of America with nine Spur Awards and 14 Spur finalist honors. A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing-a 2002 Spur winner-tells the story of an Arizona frontier family from the viewpoint of an upright grand piano. A Comanche warrior imprisoned at Florida's Fort Marion attempts to paint his way to freedom in Comanche Camp at Dawn; Buffalo Bill Cody and his wife fight it out to save their marriage in The Cody War; and Wild Bill Hickok umpires a baseball game in Kansas City in Umpire Colt-all Spur Award finalists. Don't expect gunfights on dusty streets.

Boggs fills these 21 Western, Civil War and Southern tales, old and new, with quirky cowboys, revenge, humor, heroes, baseball, teens coming of age, and even a kid playing cowboys and Indians with his mother's hair curlers.