They came together with the fury of a Texas

tornado--Duane Thomas, destined to become

one of the greatest runners in pro football his-

tory and the Dallas Cowboys, a successful.

monolithic organization that named itself

America s Team. The south Dallas street kid

who could run like the wind. and who became

a stashing, explosive 22g-pound halfback, gave

the Cowboys two spectacular seasons. Then it

all collapsed. He was gone, a memory a wisp of

smoke. And he felt betrayed.

He had retreated into impenetrabre silence,

staring out at the world from aeep, brooding

eyes. "The Look," quarterback Roger Staubach

called it. Thomas left the Cowboys after the

1971 season and for seventeen years kept arl

the anger inside. Now for the first time he tells

his story revealed partly througn a remarkable

two-hundred-page journal he kept through the

years.

It s a story that goes back to the black high

school leagues of south Dallas and to West

Texas State, an unknown school in tne Panhan-

dle with a breathtaking collection of imported

talent and a wild and violently unpredictable

coach named Joe Kerbel. It offers a unique,

inside look at the famous names in the Cow-

boys history--from the cool and unemotional

Tom Landry to the blunt and sometimes brutal

general manager Tex Schramm: to Calvin Hill,

the black intellectual from Yale; Cliff Harris, the

"rolling ball of butcher knives"; and Staubach,

the team s most famous player.

It portrays Thomas as he wanders through

his gypsy years, including his seasons with San

Diego, a team with a nasty drug history Then

came the slide: two less than brilliant years

with George Allen s Washington Redskins, a

nondescript period with Hawaii of the World

Football League, hints of drug involvement, a

succession of failing business ventures.

At the same time, the golden years of Ameri-

ca s Team drew to a close. The team that had