The Horse Marines — Zach Wyatt

Josh Sands was far from his San Antonio station, but the fierce young Texas Ranger had sworn to protect the entire Territory from her enemies -- including the Mexican warships unloading arms in the deadly swamplands along the Gulf of Mexico.
The last thing the hard-riding Ranger expected was to be corralled into Captain Isaac Burton's mad scheme for capturing the warships himself -- with a handful of men who had never so much as seen a rowboat.
But Josh had to pursue a private vengeance as well: to hunt down a death-dealing devil known as Cotton Blue; a vicious gunrunner who had killed Josh's partner in cold blood; killed for the same pleasure other men found in a woman's arms...

A native Texan born in 1946 and the oldest of five children, George Proctor spent his preschool years traveling the thoroughbred horse racing circuit across the United States with his parents (his father, W.L. Proctor was a 9-time nominee for the Racing Hall of Fame before he died in 1998). His family bought a horse training and breeding farm near the East Texas town of Gilmer in the early 1950s. He attended public school in Gilmer, Texas, where he was weaned on TV, comics, paperbacks, and Homer.
“I guess it was in the third grade that I first picked up the Illiad and Odyssey. I must have read them twice every year for five years after that,” George said in an early newspaper interview done in 1978.
The seeds were planted early for becoming a published writer and artist. George saw countless films and read anything he could find growing up and became hooked on the lore of the Old West's action and adventure and history. His Uncle Jack (a roping and riding rodeo winner) took George along on the rodeo circuit during many seasons when George absorbed more history and lore of the West.
Besides the usual farm duties and teen-age employment, Proctor worked on the racetrack with his father through the summers. At age fifteen, he earned an assistant trainer license while working at Detroit Race Course in Detroit, Michigan. He held either an assistant's or stable foreman license until age twenty-two when he graduated from Texas Technological College majoring in journalism and political science with a minor in government.
After college, George worked briefly at KLBK-TV station, a CBS affiliate out of Lubbock, Texas. He served as floor man, soundman, lighting technician, cameraman, commercial talent, advertising copywriter. George began to mentally re-visit “story” ideas that he had in mind since his early years. He loved to read/see a good story and began to think he could write stories based on ideas he'd had starting from his earliest school years.
The writing and art “plant” continued to grow as George spent five years as a newspaper reporter for the Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas, and started to submit short works and ideas to publishers. He worked two+ years on the newspaper's general assignment desk, and three+ years as the Dallas County Courthouse reporter.
Then he began a career as a fulltime freelance writer, editor, artist in 1974. But although George pursued psychological motivations and probed power structures in more serious works, he refused to characterize himself as a “serious” writer and admitted a weakness for the old shoot-em-up-at-the-mountain-and-galactic-pass idea.
“I'm still pretty much an adventure writer,” George told a large convention audience in 1985. “I like action in my stuff.”
George enjoyed action and adventure throughout his life as he delved into numerous avenues in developing ideas, storylines, and characters. He was on-call as a guest lecturer and discussion leader at several colleges and community groups as well as Science Fiction and Western Writers' conventions.