Six Bits a Day [Hardcover]

Elmer Kelton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 2005

Hewey Calloway, one of the best-loved cowboys in all of Western fiction, returns in this novel of his younger years as he and his beloved brother Walter leave the family farm in 1889 to find work in the West Texas cow country.
The brothers are polar opposites. Walter pines for a sedate life as a farmer, with wife and children; Hewey is a fiddle-footed cowboy content to work at six bits--75 cents--a day on the Pecos River ranch owned by the penny-pinching C.C. Tarpley. Hewey, who "usually accepted the vagaries of life without getting his underwear in a twist", is fun-loving and whiskey-drinking. He spends every penny he earns and regularly gets into trouble with his boss--and occasionally with the law--often dragging innocent Walter along.
When Walter falls in love with a boarding house girl and begins dreaming of a farmer's life, Hewey jumps at the chance to rescue him from this fate worse than death. He convinces Walter to join him on a mission for Tarpley, driving 600 head of cattle from beyond San Antonio to the Double-C ranch on the Pecos.
The journey is both memorable and dangerous: a murderous outlaw is searching for Hewey; and another ruthless character is determined to sabotage the cattle drive. When the drovers reach the Pecos they find Boss Tarpley in the midst of a vicious range feud with Eli Jessup, a neighboring cowman. Hewey and his brother Walter have to get the herd safely across Jessup's land-but how?
The events of Six Bits a Day precede those of Kelton's bestselling The Good Old Boys (1978, transformed into the memorable 1995 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek), and The Smiling Country (Forge, 1998).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hewey Calloway is a fun-loving cowboy who can't shoot straight; his younger brother, Walter, is a serious cowboy who, much to Hewey's horror, wants to marry a pretty girl and become a farmer. Both are looking for a job and a meal in 1889 West Texas. After being mistaken for rustlers and rescued from hanging by a friendly Texas Ranger (a terrific character from another Kelton series), the boys hire on with Mr. C.C. Tarpley's cattle ranch, working for six bits—75 cents—a day. Hewey volunteers them both to drive cattle from San Antonio back to Tarpley's ranch on the Pecos, hoping Walter will forget his fanciful notions. The trip has its share of excitement, but when their Texas Ranger friend asks for help in capturing a hard-boiled case, Hewey gets real nervous. Add some clever cattle stealing back on the Pecos, a range feud between two stubborn cattle barons, rival gangs of cowboys who would rather get drunk together and let their bosses fist-fight, and some of Hewey's pranks, and Kelton, who has more than 40 westerns to his credit, is riding high again. Not much six-gun action, but Hewey's smart mouth more than makes up for the lack of gunsmoke. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this treat for western fans, Kelton shows us a new side to his popular character Hewey Calloway. It's 1889, and Hewey and his brother, Walter, have left home to find work as cowboys. They hook up with cattleman C. C. Tarpley. Walter, experiencing his first taste of adult life, dreams of settling down and marrying a girl he has just met; Hewey, on the other hand thinks his brother is off his rocker. To rescue Walter from certain doom, Hewey contrives to get the two of them hired on to a cattle drive. Naturally, plenty of danger, excitement, and good-natured fun ensue. Kelton, who seems to have been writing westerns forever, never misses a step in this dusty, noisy, completely absorbing adventure. Larry McMurtry might get lots of publicity and awards for his westerns, but Kelton is just as fine a writer in the genre. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (October 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765309564
• ISBN-13: 978-0765309563
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elmer Kelton of San Angelo, Texas is a native Texan and author of over 50 Western novels. He has won many awards for his work and has been recognized as the Greatest Western Writer of all time by the Western Writers of America, Inc. He is the author of Forge's Texas Ranger series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Warm hearted Western, September 7, 2009

By 

F. J. Harvey "Cricket ,country music and a go... (Birmingham England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Six Bits a Day (Hewey Calloway) (Mass Market Paperback)

This was the last of the Hewey Calloway novels to be written but ,chronologically ,it comes first in the trilogy. and should be read before the other two books in the series , " The Good Old Boys " and " The Smiling Country".

A youthful Hewey and his younger ,more staid brother Walter venture into West Texas in the late 1880's in search of work ,having been orphnaed following the death of their father.the find nought but slim pickings ,work being hard to come by .Hewey enjoys the cowboy way of life but rairoads have signalled the death of the long traail drives and they are looking for ranch based work .Walter, a more pragmatic type , aspires to marry and settle into domesticity and has an altogeher tighter grip on a dollar than the gregarious and free spending -when he has any money-Hewey .

They make friends with a Ranger ,Len Tanner and this stands them in good stead when they are engaged by two men to run cattle ,which turn out to have been stolen .It is only Tanner's intervention that saves thenm from summary execution as cattle thieves and helps them secure work with C C Tarpley ,the legitimate owner of the cattle in question .The only bugbears for Hewey are now the enmity of the esacped rustler Smith who has sworn vengeance on him , his brothers' increasing affection for Eve , a waitress in a boarding house where they briefly resided and an escalating feud between his employer and Jessup a neighbouring rancher.He gets a taste of the trail drive life when sent on a trip to San Antonio to bring back some cows ,in the charge of the cantankerous but good hearted Padgett and on the drive they befriend a discharged black cavalryma,Gabe and become embroiled in erace tension and an a potential range war.

It is an episodic novel ,warm and open hearted in tone but unafraid of touching on some serious issues such as racism and the changing economic situation in the West in which cow punchers are more often than not pawns in the hands of unreasonable and parsimonious ranchers .Hewey is the dominanat figure in the book and an untypical Western hero-guns are not his forte and he is a fun loving ,hard working uncomplicated man who loves his life while knowing petrfectly well that his world is changing and will not long endure.The humour in the book is a key feature and helps make this a Western likely to appeal to people who have little or nothing in the genre previously

4.0 out of 5 stars Huck on horseback - Kelton is the Twain of the American West, February 17, 2012

By 

Timothy J. Bazzett "ReedCityBoy" (Reed City, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Six Bits a Day (Hewey Calloway) (Mass Market Paperback)

For some reason SIX BITS A DAY seemed just a bit lightweight in comparison to the other two Hewey Calloway books, THE GOOD OLD BOYS and THE SMILING COUNTRY. Maybe it's because this last "prequel" in the Calloway trilogy presents a younger, slightly more callow version of Hewey. Maybe because older is sometimes better. Nevertheless, this is still a darn fine piece of writing. No surprise there, of course, as I've come to think of Elmer Kelton as the Dickens or Twain of the American western genre. And Hewey Calloway could even be Twain's Huck, a little older, after he "lit out for the territory."

The book has all the elements of a pretty good western - cattle rustlers, scrapes with the law, a little bit of shooting - mostly "off-stage," good guys, bad guys and even a cattle drive. But Kelton's kind of western is usually a bit gentler, spoofing the kinda stuff you often got in the Saturday matinee westerns. Hewey is a bit cautious, if foolhardy, and doesn't fit the matinee model for white-hat hero. He himself admits to a Texas Ranger just before an imminent confrontation with a baddie: "I'd better tell you. I'm real consistent with a pistol. I miss every time."

But the truth is, Hewey has a good heart and a kind of down-home smarts that makes seem just heroic enough - a genuine "good old boy," if there ever was one. Having met Hewey as an older man, I'm glad I got this chance to have met him as young man, one who'd finally escaped the drudgery of his farming boyhood and traveling (farther) west to seek his fortune as a real cowboy. And his ambitions are pretty modest, as he comments one night by the campfire -

"This is the life we was born for ... Breathin' the clean outdoor air, eatin' from the fat of the land. We got good horses to ride and nobody around to boss us. Paradise couldn't be no better."

Indeed, Hewey. Who needs all the complications and responsibilities that come along with success and wealth? Ride 'em, cowboy.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

5.0 out of 5 stars Elmer Kelton = Good+, December 3, 2010

By 

J. Maker "Jim" (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Six Bits a Day (Hewey Calloway) (Mass Market Paperback)

Elmer Kelton wrote about people, a story teller. He is unique and original. If you have not read one of his stories you should, "Six Bit's a Day" is good a place to start as any. He left Louis Lamour in the dust long ago! His characters are real and you come to care for them. No plastic super heroes here!