Mostrando resultados por autor "C.J. Petit" en Todas las categorías

Zack's eighteenth birthday was tomorrow, but he wasn’t expecting a party. He needed to get away from the family cattle ranch as fast as he could. There was nothing for him at his home, and he'd prefer facing the unknown to staying. Yet he knew that in leaving, he was taking the easy way out and should stay to protect his stepmother and brothers. He may have rationalized that he could do more if he left, but that voice in the back of his head kept whispering “coward.”

They came out of the sun and through the dust cloud created by the herd, firing their Winchesters and killing the men who were moving the cattle to Abilene. Each man fell just minutes after the attack began, and the stampeding cattle finished the job that the rustlers’ .44s had started. Just hours later, the herd was already gone, the dust settled, and bodies were strewn along the ground. But one stirred and would never forget what he saw as his eyes opened.

Gabe Owens had been assigned to investigate a case of timber poaching near Missoula in Montana Territory that could have been handled by a less experienced agent of the railroad, but the case had changed dramatically after the apparent murder of the station manager. What made it difficult for Gabe was that the station manager may have been shot by his wife, a woman he’d proposed to years earlier.

Rhody Jones, the first mate of the schooner, Vivienne, walked from the docks into the streets of New Orleans. He’d been dismissed by the captain after the ship had barely survived the incredible battering from a powerful hurricane. He could have signed on to another ship returning to New England, but he wanted to try something different. He wanted to make a land voyage across the Southwestern United States to California and then maybe take a ship out of San Francisco.

Lin Chase was aptly named as he’d chosen the profession of bounty hunter. This chase was to apprehend or kill the notorious Whitacre brothers, and he was getting close. They were just a few hours ahead of him now after more than a week and a half of tracking. He was the best at what he did and had never even felt the bite of a bullet and didn’t expect this to be any different. But it wasn’t the Whitacre brothers who would cause the enormous shift in his life. That would come two days later and would start at a peaceful family farm that held more promise than it did danger.

Keith watched his young cousin ride away and shook his head. He would be leading a party into the wilderness which was what they both did for a living. But Angus wasn’t escorting a typical hunting party. He was taking a newlywed couple into the deep forests of Washington Territory because they wanted to find a fabled sasquatch.

Laramie had just been hit by the Clayton gang, leaving Sheriff Joe Tate without any deputies to serve the entire county. But, as bad as the gunfight had been, the visitor to his office to file a complaint for something that wasn’t even a crime turned out to be much more significant and life-changing.

AJ Smith had finally achieved his Big Dream. He had his ranch, a good-sized herd, and a healthy bank account. He thought he had finally added the last, most important part of the dream when Hannah Jacobsen, recent widow and mother of two, moved in with her sister in the neighboring ranch. But the reason she had become a widow would turn into a harrowing race across two counties, sometimes as the pursuer and other times as the pursued.

No one had seen the innocuous rock on the long climb to the pass on the Oregon Trail, and when the last covered wagon in the long line rolled onto the lump of granite, it shouldn’t have made much of a difference, but it caused almost instant tragedy. Just seconds later, the wagon plunged over the edge of the narrow trail, then began its deadly, tumbling roll into the abyss, spewing its contents as it fell to its destruction. Her precious children had been trapped inside, and Rebecca could only watch in horror. Her children had been her life, and now she had nothing.

Mark Jordan was in no hurry to finish the long ride across Texas to reach his first assignment in Dallas. He was ashamed of himself for not standing up to his father and choosing his own career. But now, he was an ordained minister and wished something would happen to change the course of his life, unaware that the two riders who were approaching him from the west would soon do that and much more.

Rachel looked down at her husband’s dead body, the long knife protruding from his gut. She knew she’d be hanged or shot if she stayed in Missoula, so she’d have to run. But where could she go? The only place that came to mind was the hidden valley northwest of town. It was owned by a loner named Marsh Anderson, whom she had never met. She was going to have to bet her life that he wouldn’t turn her in to the sheriff, the brother of her dead husband.

Erich had been treated as a freak of nature for as long as he could remember. When he was twelve, he was bigger than any fully grown man in Brainerd. His defense against the constant taunts was to retreat into a shell which marked him as a dimwitted giant. He'd been working as a blacksmith for six years when he found himself without a job and decided to leave Minnesota for the far West. Maybe in Montana Territory he would be more readily accepted as just a man and not a monster.

When aging cowboy Gus Matthews gets fired from Rocking-C ranch for laying out the mean-spirited, know-nothing foreman, he heads north for Oklahoma, where he finds work with the Aronsons, an elderly couple whose ranch has seen better days. What should be easy work for kindly employers quickly turns sour when Gus discovers that the neighboring Slash-M ranch have been rustling the Aronsons’ cattle. Even worse, Gus becomes the corrupt sheriff’s main suspect in a string of violent crimes plaguing the county.

After five long years in the army, First Lieutenant John Flynn was finally being mustered out and would soon be going home to the family he hadn’t even heard from in all that time. But when he rode to the family home, he made two shocking discoveries: his family was gone, and he had been declared dead by the army four years earlier. He left to cross the plains of Nebraska to find his family, but he would find so much more.

When the Northern Pacific had ceased operations at the start of the Panic of 73, Cap had been stranded with his survey crew in the middle of Montana Territory. Since then, he’d lived a hard, solitary life. Recently he’s spent a few months as a gambler in the untamed town of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. But neither was what he wanted out of life. When he heard that the Northern Pacific had come out of bankruptcy and would soon start laying track west out of Bismarck, he left Deadwood in the hope of returning to his old life. Just a day’s ride from Bismarck, he discovered a disaster.

Ed's life changed that first day of September when that deadly twister had roared across his Texas ranch and destroyed his house. But what was much worse was that it had ripped his Bessie and their boys from him and destroyed much more than the wooden structure; it had destroyed his life. Rather than rebuild, he had taken the coward’s way out and crawled into a bottle to escape the loneliness. But Bessie’s anger and disappointment finally made him understand that he had a life to live and other people to help.

Joe and Faith were miles ahead of the long line of wagons as they ascended Cheyenne Pass. They knew that when they passed over the summit, the Laramie Plains would spread out before them. But just before they reached the top of the pass, Joe pulled up when he thought he heard gunfire. Just seconds later, he and Faith quickly rode to the summit where they witnessed what could only be called a massacre.

Sergeant Ellis White had the Yankee colonel in the crosshairs of the Amadon telescopic sight on the J.F. Brown sniper rifle and knew his index finger just had to squeeze the trigger, but he paused. He hadn’t wanted to be the regimental sniper in the first place because he thought it was a cowardly way of fighting. Ellis had been fighting in this war since the beginning and was tired of it. He just wanted to go back to his ranch in Hardeman County just two hundred miles away and return to his life as a rancher where all he had to worry about was the Texas heat, ornery cattle and the Comanches.

The scheduled train from Granger was overdue by three hours. He’d suspected a mechanical breakdown or maybe even a derailment. But the engineer of the next train to use that track had just reported that he hadn’t found any signs of the train. He had no idea how an entire train could simply vanish, but as he pondered the mystery, the head telegrapher came to his office and showed him a telegram that had been sent to Union Pacific headquarters. It was a ransom demand for $100,000.

Mattie Foster had made a terrible mistake. She had left Missouri and come to Green River, Wyoming to find her father; a father who was not the man that she even knew. Now, she was being held by two men against her will. The man who was determined to find her was a rancher. A rancher with a debt to repay.