Westward the Tide

Colonel Utah Blaine, held captive by the Army of the Revolution, broke out of jail and headed north from Mexico with nothing but the clothes on his back. Then he found new trouble struggling at the end of a noose - and stepped in just in time to save the life of a Texas rancher. The would-be executioners were the rancher’s own men, looking to steal his land.

As far as the eye can see is a vast, empty horizon. Evie Teale has finally accepted that her husband won’t be coming home. To make ends meet she runs a temporary stage station. But though she is diligent and careful, Evie must prepare for the day when the passengers no longer come and she must protect her children in an untamed country where’s it’s far easier to die than to live. Miles away, another solitary soul battles for survival. Conagher is a lean, dark-eyed drifter who is not about to let a gang of rustlers push him around.

Tom Kedrick earned his stripes during the Civil War, fought Apaches, and even soldiered overseas. But in the high desert country of New Mexico, the battle-hardened Kedrick is entangled in a different kind of war, fueled by greed and deception. Hired by Alton Burwick to drive a pack of renegades and outlaws off the government land recently set aside for an Indian reservation, Kedrick begins to notice that things are not as they seem. As his suspicions grow, he realizes that he may be fighting on the wrong side of a land swindle.

They tried to tell him that his father had killed himself, but Kearney McRaven knew better. No matter what life had dealt him, his father would go down fighting. And as he delved deeper into the mystery, he learned that just before his father died, the elder McRaven had experienced a remarkable run of luck: he’d won nearly ten thousand dollars and the deed to a cattle ranch.

He had led the posse for miles through the desert, but now Matt Keelock was growing desperate. He was worried about Kristina. His trip to the town of Freedom for supplies had ended in a shootout. If caught he would hang. Even though Kris could handle a horse and rifle as well as most men, the possibility of Oskar Neerland's finding her made Matt's blood run cold. He knew the violent and obsessive Neerland, publicly embarrassed when Matt had stepped in and stolen Kris away, would try to kill them both if given half a chance.

Considine and Pete Runyon had once been friends, back in the days when both were cowhands. But when Runyon married the woman Considine loved, the two parted ways. Runyon settled down and became a sheriff. Considine took up robbing banks. Now Considine is planning a raid on the bank at Obaro, a plan that will pit him against Runyon...and lead to riches or suicide. The one thing he never counted on was meeting a strong, beautiful woman and her stubborn father, hell-bent on traveling alone through Apache territory to a new life.

Wounded, dehydrated, and escaping a violent feud with the men of Bob Sutton’s ranch, Trace Jordan is near collapse when he descends from the heat of the desert into a cool, secluded canyon. He wakes to find a beautiful woman gently nursing him back to health. Strong and proud, Maria Cristina has also suffered at the hands of Sutton and his men. The experience has left her hostile and defiant. Trace, intrigued by Maria’s grit and determination, can’t help trying to peel back her layers - but his attraction makes her a target.

Clay Bell spent the last six years fighting Indians, rustlers, and the wilderness itself to make the B-Bar ranch the prize of the Deep Creek Range. But Jud Devitt, a ruthless speculator from the East, now threatens everything Clay has worked for. Devitt, holding a contract with the Mexican Central to deliver railroad ties, wants to harvest timber off the land where Clay grazes his cattle. Backing Devitt are shady politicians, a dishonest banker, and fifty of the toughest lumberjacks in the county.

To get fifty thousand dollars in gold across fifty miles of desert, the desperate band quickly learns how much they need each other - and how deep their greed and suspicion can run. At the end of the journey lie the waters of Baja and a new life in Mexico, but first they have to survive the savage heat, bounty-hunting Yaqui Indians, and the shifting, treacherous nature of both the desert sands and their own conflicting loyalties.

Dan Killoe - over six feet of tough, raw, lightning-fast man. He had a trail heard and a mass of settlers to get across unknown territory to a new land. Then he gave shelter to a stranger being hunted by Felipe Soto, scar-faced leader of the renegade Comancheros. This time Killoe was borrowing more trouble than he wanted to handle.

It was the only water for miles in a vast, sun-blasted desert where water meant survival. So Logan Cates naturally headed for Papago Wells. But he wasn't the only one. Fleeing the fierce Churupati and his Apache warriors, other travelers had come there, too. And when the Apaches found them, they began a siege as relentless and unforgiving as the barren land - and just as inescapable.

Macon Fallon had never needed more than a deck of cards, a fast horse, and a ready gun; he was counting on those things now as he led an unsuspecting group of settlers to an abandoned mining town. But while Fallon prepared to pass the ghost town off as a gold mine in the making, a funny thing happened: a real-life community started to take shape in the town he’d christened Red Horse. So when a band of vicious outlaws and a kid who fancied himself a gunslinger threatened to rip Red Horse apart, Fallon found himself caught in one predicament he’d never gambled on. 

In The Rustlers of West Fork, the quick-thinking, fast-shooting cowpuncher heads west to deliver a fortune in bank notes to his old friend, Dick Jordan. When he arrives at the Circle J, he discovers that the rancher and his daughter, Pam, are being held prisoner by a desperate band of outlaws led by the ruthless Avery Sparr and his partner Arnold Soper. Even if Hopalong Cassidy can free Jordan and Pam, he will have to lead them across rough and untamed Apache country, stalked by the outlaws who have vowed to gun him down.

Rafe Caradec—gambler, wanderer, soldier of fortune—was as hard a man as the battlefields and waterfronts of Latin America could fashion, but he was as good as his word. As Charles Rodney lay dying in a dank ship’s fo’c’sle, Rafe swore to make sure that Rodney’s Wyoming ranch went to his daughter, Ann. In Painted Rock, Wyoming, Caradec found land for a man to love, miles of rolling grasslands and towering mountains.

When Tom Chantry comes west to buy cattle, he quickly runs into trouble. During a drunken scuffle in a bar, Dutch Akin challenges Chantry to a gunfight. Leaving town rather than face Akin, Chantry is quickly branded a coward. Later, when hiring men to take his herd to the railroad, Chantry faces a dilemma: No one wants to make the long, dangerous ride with a leader of questionable courage. So when French Williams, a shrewd and ruthless cattleman, makes Chantry an offer, Tom reluctantly accepts his unusual terms: Tom must remain with the drive from start to finish.