Showing results for "blackstone" in Westerns

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it." This volume presents nine of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the human side of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are seven stories penned by America's favorite Western author.

Deadwood, late 1876. A rowdy and reckless undertaker’s delight. What better place for a killer to blend in? Enter undertaker Clementine Johanssen, tall and deadly with a hot temper and short fuse, hired to clean up Deadwood’s dead...and the “other” problem. She’s hell-bent on poking, sticking, or stabbing anyone who steps out of line. But when a couple Santa Fe sidewinders ride into town searching for their missing uncle, they land neck deep in lethal gunplay, nasty cutthroats, and endless stinkin’ snow.

The most wanted man in the West, Big Bob McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’s been judged guilty by association. To clear his name, Carson teams up with bounty hunter Colby Tate to track down the outlaws—now scattered across the frontier—and bring them to justice.

To start their new life together, Jamie Pratt and his young bride join a westward wagon train bound for the Rocky Mountains. They get as far as Helena when their unscrupulous wagon master deserts them, leaving them as good as dead in a godforsaken, blood-scorched land. The other settlers agree to set stakes where they are, but Jamie and his bride press on toward the Bitterroot Valley, deep into Sioux territory. They never come out the other side.

Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts.

Sixteen-year-old Titus Bass fears one fate more than any other: never to experience the great wilderness or the wildness inside himself. So late one night he snatches a squirrel gun and a handful of biscuits, flees into the woods, and doesn’t look back. From Louisville past the Chickasaw bluffs and the Natchez Trace all the way to New Orleans, he plunges into the rough-and-tumble life along the banks of the Mississippi: a volatile, violent country of boatmen and river bandits, knife fights and Indian raids, strong liquor and stronger women.

Mackworth “Mack” Harrigan’s family legacy burned to the ground in the spring of 1849. The Ohio mill that brought them prosperity was now cinder and ash, and his ruthless father perished in the flames along with their fortune. If the Harrigans have a future, it lies out west in open country where they can build whatever lives they choose. Mack knows his wife Ell, and their children Kane, Meghan, and Fitch are more than capable of overcoming the challenges of their journey.

When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than forty thousand acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse.

Welcome to Ironhead Station, Indian Territory, where the train tracks end and the real action begins. The hell-on-wheels construction camp is the final destination for hard-drinking sinners, gamblers, and outlaws. And woe to the man who tries to clean it up. Morgan Clyde is a former New York City policeman and Union sharpshooter who lost everything in the Civil War. But he’s still got his guns and his guts. Some folks say he is meaner and tougher than the Devil himself. Which is why the owners of the MK&T Railroad hired Clyde for one hell of a job.

There are two sides to Captain Tom Skinner. One follows orders. One follows his gut. To keep the wild, untamed Arizona Territory safe, he’s going with his gut. Damnable news has reached Fort Verde. Outlaw Jessup Henry and his gang of thugs are raising hell north of Santa Fe, one homestead massacre after another. Now they’re on the run in Arizona Territory evading the law. Cavalryman Tom Skinner’s command: charge south with his patrol and wipe them out. But Skinner knows the land. Military decree be damned, he’s deserting the wayward route—against orders—for the right one

After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, 16-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the 20th century. Caleb’s moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.

The second novel in Joseph M. Marshall III's acclaimed Lakota Western series begins in 1875, as Sitting Bull gathers thousands of Lakota to face the growing problem of white incursion. What follows is a sweeping tale of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, including the days and weeks leading up to the conflict and the remarkable defeat of General George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry.

Back East, they told tall tales about Marshal Clay Halser, the fearless Civil War veteran who became known as the “Hero of the Plains” for his daring exploits in the Wild West. But the truth, as revealed in his private journals, is even more compelling.

In 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the Lawrence, Kansas, Massacre, former bushwhacker Cole Younger stands before a preacher at a tent revival. "I was, I remain, and I will always be a wicked man," Younger states, taking a step toward salvation. And for a man like Cole Younger, there is much to confess.

A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock - and the Cattle Raisers' Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high-plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they're the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who's been arrested for the murders. Stovepipe and Wilbur believe the boy is innocent.

Although he doesn't know cattle or cowboys, Missourian Jim Traft finds himself as the foreman of a tough Arizona outfit tasked with fencing a hundred miles of open cattle range. Brought on by his wealthy uncle, he faces this difficult trial with youthful aplomb. But Traft faces a community that stands to suffer because of this new drift fence, and he must walk a fine line in order to honor his uncle's business while not incurring the wrath of longtime residents....

Peter Dunstan is a big rancher who wants to become bigger, to control more land. So when he buys Dr. Henry Morgan's ranchland that has been unsuccessfully converted to farming, it is his intention to return it to open range. The only stipulation the doctor makes is that Dunstan must retain Sandy Sweyn, who has more or less been Dr. Morgan's ward. Though the man is of age, he is generally considered a half-wit, even by the doctor. Still, Sandy has a fabulous gift: He can communicate with animals.

Because of the unrestrained slaughter of cougars on Buckskin Mountain, the deer population has increased so fast that they begin to starve. But when Thad Eburne, chief forest ranger, hears the government's plan to open a massive deer hunt to hundreds of indiscriminate hunters, he worries that it will only worsen man's dangerous meddling with nature. Then, when Eburne decides to save a deer herd from a cattleman bent on selling illegal deer meat for easy money, he finds himself up against the deadliest outlaw in the West.