Showing results by author "Gary McCarthy" in All Categories

He is the most cruelly dangerous opponent the Derby Man has ever challenged: Wesley Bryant, now the crime lord of San Francisco. Darby smashes through the sword-wielding Chinese Tong warriors who protect Bryant's vicious web of vice, but Bryant escapes to launch his most ruthless scheme - stealing the vast wealth of Alaska for his own empire of evil.

America's richest legends come from the frontier - from the land where the events of a single moment might erase the lines between law and lawlessness, between safety and mortal danger, between heroes and villains. The carefully selected stories in this collection are vibrant proof that the great American West is a fertile ground to storytellers. Here's the most varied collection of short stories, by 17 highly acclaimed Western writers.

Two Colorado cowboys searching for strayed cattle during a harsh snow storm discover the remains of an ancient city built into the side of a huge cliff. It is the ruined city of the Anasazi Indians, a civilization lost for over a thousand years. This is the story of how Mesa Verde, the cliff city, came to be. It is A.D. 400 at the Animus river Valley in what is now Northwestern New Mexico, and Echata, the leader of the Raven Clan, was concerned for his people.

For young Quinn Wallace, reaching the land called Yellowstone was a quest he would rather die for than abandon. For the courageous woman who fell in love with him, it was a reason to surrender everything she once held dear. Pursued by her vengeful husband, the lovers fought their way into the mythical land, and then fought to stay.

When Darby Buckham's fianceé Dolly Beavers fails to show for their announced wedding, he realizes something is wrong. He strikes out for Reno convinced she must be a victim of foul play. Darby is accompanied by an overzealous, aspiring young writer. Looking after this tenderfoot while tracking down Dolly's captors on a danger-ridden trail that winds through Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado, Darby wonders if he'll live to see his wedding day.

Here is the bold adventure story of William Dunn, an educated man yet an accomplished mountain man. His life becomes forever entwined with the wild, unforgettable, Grand Canyon. He hires on as a guide for the John Wesley Powell historic expedition into the Grand Canyon, but then leaves the expedition to guide two men back to civilization.

Darby Buckingham was an unlikely candidate for frontier life. From his round-toed shoes to his derby hat, he was a man of culture, a creature of comfort, who liked his gourmet restaurants and expensive cigars. The short, stocky New Yorker made a fortune writing dime novels about the old west.

Look sharp, hit hard - that's the Derby Man's style. He's a fast-moving mountain of muscle who throws himself into the thick of the West's greatest adventures - like the Pony Express, a grueling 2,000 mile race through hell. The pace and terrain are deadly enough but vengeful Paiute warriors and murdering saboteurs led by a sadistic giant threaten to turn the route into a trail of blood. Then one man with the guts to save the Pony Express stepped forward - the Derby Man.

Darby Buckingham, the portly New York writer, had an appetite for local color to add punch to his newest dime novel. But when Hench Hightower rode into town with his half-dead herd of mustangs, Darby had no stomach for what he saw. It was time to end a vicious cattle baron's control of the Nevada range...time to end the murder of the mustangs. Darby looked like a dude, but he'd fight like a demon. Caught up in a stampeding adventure, Buckingham swore he'd live to tell the tale.

The hat fit him, the tin star didn't. But when his pal, Sheriff Zeb Cather, was taken out of action, Darby Buckingham started playing lawman to the town of Running Springs, Wyoming. And the town sure needed him now, the gun-slick honchos of neighboring Snakegrass Junction were determined to blast Running Springs out of existence. Darby was a man of fierce loyalties and fiercer courage.

They were on their way to the richest silver strike in human history. Six people who met in a Sierra blizzard enroute to the infamous Comstock Lode. Prim wallflower Holly York, and beautiful Julia Matson with a secret no one could forgive. Clayton James, hopelessly caught between the world of whites and Indians, and brilliant thwarted inventor Glenn Donovan. Fay Taylor, with a singing voice from heaven, and her brother Dade, evil enough to send them all straight to hell.

Sodbusters are about equal to farm animals on the social scale of the ranching community of Wyoming in the 1870s. Zach and Carrie Bennett, teenaged children of that wretched class, are determined to escape the scorn. They resolve to trek to Texas on foot. They are babes on the prairie, ignorant of the geography and hostility.

The Gila River flows gently through the parched Sonoran Desert. Along its banks, fierce Apaches, Pima farmers, Spaniards, and brash Americans all vie for control in a harsh and unforgiving land. There is Miguel Santana, a young Spaniard abandoned by his comrades; his Pima son Vitorio; Jacova, a woman whose indomitable spirit tamed a mighty Apache warrior; and the "man of three bloods".

The river belongs to all, and to none. On the banks of the Gila, their lives all come together, in love and in war.

A man could mine fabulous wealth on the Comstock, but Darby Buckingham strikes only a mother lode of trouble. With his sledgehammer fists and sharply honed wits, Darby sets out to expose a spellbinding stock manipulator. Rigging a boxing match that becomes a nightmare of punishment, sabotaging a mine shaft into a pit of death - Darby's rattle-snake of an opponent baits him ruthlessly.

Half-breed Charlie Coyote takes on the notorious Brahman bull "Buzzard" during an all-Indian Rodeo in Winslow, Arizona. Elvis Presley is watching in the stands "getting material" for his role in another B-grade Hollywood movie. Elvis rushes Charlie to a Flagstaff hospital to save his life. Thus begins the unlikely friendship of two men from drastically distinct worlds.

John Augustus Sutter came to the wide and wild California country to build an empire. At his side was Morgan Beck, out to stake his own claim at the confluence of two powerful rivers, the Sacramento and the American.

In Our American West, Volume 1, discover humor, tragedy, and courage in every one of these delightful stories. Gary McCarthy has been writing about the American West for 30 years and these are some of his favorite topics written - not for the expert or scholar - but for all the armchair admirers of thing historically written.

Wild mustangs, ghosts on the ranch, gun-toting outlaws and trailblazing cowboys roam the pages of this collection of 8 classic stories about the American frontier. Travel down "The Road to Hell" with a mysterious ranch builder, face down the "Yellow Devil" mountain lion, travel "Where the Wind Blows Free," and join in on a herd of other adventures that will keep you reading until long after high noon.

On their way to Colorado, Ruff and Dixie Ballou drive their horses through New Mexico. Their intention to quietly drive the horses on through goes well until they find themselves inadvertently involved in a shootout with four outlaws who robbed the banks of a small town in New Mexico. An edgy sheriff and angry townspeople get the Ballou’s involved in a situation they would be more happy to do without. Even more so when they are arrested by the sheriff as robbery suspects.

When the rest of the West was already won... the mountains remained unspoiled and deadly. The men and women who tamed this savage land were tough, lawless, and when necessary, as mean as the traps they carried. They lived by a private code of proud honor and swift justice. Burly, broad-shouldered Isaac Beard is the living embodiment of that mountain code. To survive, he will have to fight his way to a safe haven near Spirit Lake in the Colorado upcountry....