(The Last Outlaw, by Rick Steber)
A national release launch party for The Last Outlaw will be held at the Rick Steber — MAKERS showroom, located at 131 NE Fifth Street, Prineville, on Saturday, February 13 from 12-3pm. Artist KC Snider will have limited edition prints of the cover illustration available for sale. Come meet the author and artist.
The Last Outlaw, by Award-Winning Author Rick Steber
The Last Outlaw is the true story of Tobe Skiens, a 23-year-old Texas buckaroo, who rides into Eastern Oregon in 1906. He soon takes up the outlaw trail, stealing horses and running them across a 2,000-mile swath of desert country. This is a no-man’s land that remained wild and outside the fringe of civilization long after the remainder of the country has been settled and gentrified. Tobe sells his stolen horses in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, and then turns around, steals more horses and drives them north to Oregon. Stealing horses is the most dangerous and exciting of all occupations. It is played for the highest of all possible stakes — a man’s life.
The crimes Tobe is accused of quickly escalate from rustling cattle and horses to kidnapping a young girl and keeping her for more than two years — even fathering a child with her — and finally the killing of an unarmed man in a cold-blooded shootout, followed by a posse giving chase for ten long weeks. Out West here, any of these indiscretions, if a man is caught, will have him dancing at the end of a short rope.
Author Rick Steber, long considered the voice of Eastern Oregon, has over 40 titles under his belt and more than two million books in print. He has won many national and international awards, five of his books have been optioned for movies and he is the only Oregon author to have been presented with the prestigious Western Writers of America Spur Award – Best Western Novel. He is a keen observer of the evolving American West and articulates these changes in prose that is boldly descriptive, invigorating and spectacularly creative.