Not so many years ago, rumor had it that the grizzled mountain man living by himself in a cabin on Lone Cone Peak in southwestern Colorado was an outlaw to stay clear of. A true survivor of the woolliest days of America's great move westward, he was a man with chilling memories and few regrets, a legend folks whispered about for years - a hard, hurting cowboy. His name was Brules.Cat Brules began life as a wild, full-of-the-devil young plainsman. He rode carefree and hell-bent on his favorite horse across Kansas, where he met a girl and fell in love. He drove a mule team deep into buffalo country with a starry-eyed scheme to strike it rich, and he had the deadly misfortune to lose his best friend to the Comanches. And from that point on Brules became a man in search of justice and his own soul...a man whose life would embrace the whole short, passionate history of the Old West.Bringing to life this grand, sweeping novel is a feat of sheer storytelling genius. The tale unfolds as Brules tells it to a young man who dared to approach the gritty outlaw's lonely cabin and was rewarded with the story of Cat Brules's life...of his one brief, passionate love with Wild Rose, a Shoshone woman; of his unshakable friendship with a silver-spurred Mexican named Pedro; and of his one-man war against those who robbed him of his girl, his friend, and his heart. Written by Harry Combs, the charismatic eighty-year-old aviator and outdoorsman, Brules began as a story Combs told to his grandchildren and grew into this sprawling, impeccably researched historical novel about freedom and our nation's past. It is a work so grand in scope and scale, so filled with brutality and violence, heroism and tenderness, it will take your breath away. Brules is written in fire and blood; it is tougher than Lonesome Dove, richer than Jack London, and better than any of them. Read Less