Cross Timbers

     The Cross Timbers country was hell's borderland. It was a stubby forest of blackjack and post-oak mixed with occasional patches of prickly pear. Along the few small streams, most of them intermittent, were redbud, persimmon, and dogwood. Here and there were open meadows, varying in extent. In places the forest was practically impenetrable.

    Blackjack, a kind of scrub oak, had a way of sending roots out just under the surface, and at various distances new trees would spring up from these roots. The result was a series of dense thickets, the earth beneath them matted with roots, their stiff branches intermingled.

    There were trails made by wid horses and occasional small herds of buffalo or deer, and these usually led from meadow to meadow across the vast stretch of country covered by the Cross Timbers.

    This is Louis L'Amour's description of the Cross Timbers area that stretches from near Coffeyville, Kansas down across Oklahoma and into central Texas. It was the setting for "Cross Timbers Trouble," the first story in The Coffeyville Tetralogy, which I wrote in 2022.