Lamar Clayton, a taciturn, old-fashioned West Texas rancher, is the central character in Stephen Harriganâ??s well-crafted novel â??Remember Ben Clayton.â? As a young man, Lamar rode on a number of the great cattle drives from Texas to the stockyards in Kansas and lived the cowboyâ??s life in full.
More significantly, the experience altered his life for good and bad, but mostly the latter. He was captured at the age of 12 along with his elder sister, Jewell, by a band of Comanche who slaughtered the rest of his family. He was with the tribe for nearly two years, joining its war parties and becoming wilder than the wildest Indian, until he was traded by his captors for ransom money offered by U.S. military officials.
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