The Devil's Rope — Tim Washburn

The Ridgeway family faces their greatest challenge when a devastating drought threatens to spark an open range war, forcing them to fight for their ranch, their dream -- and their lives . . .

DEATH BY THE DEVIL'S ROPE
It's the summer of 1883. A severe drought threatens to bankrupt the Ridgeway's Rocking R Ranch and every rancher in northwest Texas. The cattle are thirsty and hungry. The ranchers are getting desperate. And a simple new invention called barbed wire -- the devil's rope -- is their only defense against illegal herders grazing on their land. Percy Ridgeway and his brother Eli are working overtime to stake a fence around their sixty thousand acres. But someone keeps cutting the wires. The Ridgeways keep fixing them. And soon Perry is tangled in a high-stakes showdown with a thieving cattleman named Northcutt and his cutthroat henchmen. Let the battle begin . . .

History would call it the Fence Wars of 1883. The Ridgeways would call it the summer they fought back -- come hell or dry water . . .