The Ryder Series

Joshua Ryder is eight when his mother is murdered. An old cowboy becomes the father he has never had and, when he is dying, asks Josh, now 18, to leave the ranch with their neighbor, Miguel, and get some experience working for another outfit. Riding Shadow, the buckskin he's raised from a colt, Josh comes to the Rawlins' ranch and hires on to help drive a herd of longhorns to Kansas.

Joshua Ryder, ashamed of being an outlaw's son and convinced he carries bad blood, leaves Texas in the spring of 1876 with a trail herd of longhorns bound for Montana. The following spring, he heads west with plans to settle near the Pacific Ocean and live in solitude with just his books and his horses for company. But a Nez Perce woman and her baby change his plans, and he ends up in Virginia City, Montana.