Showing results by author "Lauran Paine"

Kit Butler and Lige Turner are weathered trackers—trappers who once lived among the Dakota people as brothers, learning their language, their land, and their way of life. Now, with the fur trade dwindling, they find themselves guides for a wagon train—a group of emigrants leaving behind the comforts of the world they know for the Wild West. The problem is, they have to pass through hostile Dakota Indian territory to reach their destination.

The open range men are free-grazing cattlemen, those who don't own land but drive their stock through the country to graze. Boss Spearman knows that times are changing. Local ranchers are staking claims to grazing areas and building up extensive cattle empires. Boss has no quarrel with that, but he won't be intimidated or scared off. So when Denton Baxter makes it clear, by killing one man and seriously wounding another, that he intends to drive Boss and his crew out, Boss must make a stand.

This Western duo sees a rancher accused of the murder of a woman he believes is still alive and a trail drive made dangerous by the threat of Comancheros.

In the first story of this Western duo, Caleb Doorn is sent to Arizona to deal with an Apache uprising. The other is the story of Buck Baylor, who fights back against the men who murdered his father and captured his mother.

The small town of Ballester owes its prosperity to the confluence of three big ranches - Snowshoe, Mexican Hat, and Rainbow. Its single lawman, Deputy Sheriff Percy Whittaker, known as Perc, didn't have to deal with much lawbreaking other than the occasional drunk on a Saturday night. Until a drifter named Sam Logan rode into town looking for work. 

Ryan Shanley prefers to be called Shan. It's not much, but it helps put some distance between his life during and after serving in the Union army. And he'll put even more distance between the two once he arrives in the Wyoming Territory, where he has a land grant for two square miles. On the stage to Tico, the town nearest his ranch, he meets Sarahlee Gordon. She was only planning to visit Wyoming long enough to sell the cabin she inherited from her uncle. But the attraction between the two becomes obvious on the stage and grows after they arrive.

Trying to escape certain death by four men pursuing him, Pete Knight, a cowhand seeking a job, sees a town ahead in the distance. Little does he know that he is heading into Gunsight, Wyoming, where a long-standing feud between the townsmen and the range men has reached the boiling point. When Pete is jailed and lynched in the middle of the night by five men wearing burlap hoods. Pete's brother, Ben, a US deputy marshal, soon arrives seeking vengeance.

George Carpenter has fallen in love with Irene Cobalt, his young Indian housekeeper. But local attorney Clarence Black wants Sheriff Frank Girard to put an end to this immoral association. 

The Wyoming territory is vast, rich with grasslands, and largely lawless. So when a conflict arises over whose herd gets to graze in those grasslands, then it's more likely to be settled with a shootout than a lawyer. The cattlemen believed their cows ought to have free grazing. It had been a long winter and the herd was hungry. But that means the sheep ranchers would have to move on, at gunpoint if necessary. But the way the sheep ranchers see things, they were there first, and the cowboys ought to be the ones looking for greener pastures.

Five days ago, the blowing up of the express office safe in Burnt Timbers, Montana, had gone off without a hitch for the four members of the Buck Streeter gang, netting them $28,000. Since then they have taken refuge in an abandoned shack on a plateau above the town of Brigham in northern Wyoming. With its bank and express office across the street from each other and lacking any telegraph for communication, Brigham seems like the perfect place to stage their next robbery before laying low for a while.

The trouble began for Sheriff Claude Rainey when the Hightower Ranch cowboys discovered a mummified man and his horse in a desert canyon near Springville, Arizona - both shot in the head. Ordinarily that should have been the end of it. Few men riding the outlaw trail up out of Mexico make it through that godforsaken country. What troubled Rainey and the townsmen, however, was what Hightower foreman Al Trail had brought into town and given to the sheriff.

The massacre at Fort Mims is what spurred young Davy Crockett to leave his family and become a volunteer scout in the military campaign between American militias and the Creek Indians. It was while serving in this capacity that Crockett earned his reputation as a first-rate scout, which added to his already established reputation as a crack shot. Like many volunteers serving in militias, Crockett also had to concern himself with protecting his wife, his children, and his land.

Two tales of action, adventure, and the Wild West from a founding master of the genre, Lauran Paine.

This Western duo includes stories about undercover rangers trying to expose a gang of livestock rustlers and an experienced gunfighter looking for vengeance in his hometown but instead encountering trouble....

Amos Swift's two sons find their father dead. Jason tells Amos to prepare the body for burial - while he, knowing the murderer's identity, sets out to even the score himself....

In Renegades Beat the War Drum, the frontiersman Caleb Dorn, known among the Indians as Silent Outcast, tries to negotiate with Red Sleeves and his band of Apaches who have surrounded the town of Denton and cut off all access. In Texas Herds Bring Death, Caleb has moved north into cattle country where a Texas herd is not permitted by the Crow nation to have access to the trail through their land. Feud on the Mesa concerns two saddle mates, Rufe Miller and Jud Hudson, who committed an ill-advised stagecoach robbery.

Having served his time for cattle stealing, Ray Kelly returns to Welton to act upon his bitter dream of vengeance in the title story of this trio.

It was spring on the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains of Texas, the time for the cattle drives to push north to the rail heads in Kansas. The "Lost Cause" of the South was still fresh in the mind of Southerners, including 55-year-old Ben Albright, a pioneer of the Texas cattle drives, who was well familiar with the trail and its dangers. Northerners have taken over the trading post and ferry and refused provisions or passage to Texas cattle drives. When Albright finds a way around this, tensions reach the breaking point.

Life for John Hawk is looking up when he is offered a half stake in a stageline business. But will his fraudulent past catch up with him?

This is the story of spectacular gun, customised so it gives the upper hand in any gun duel, and the chaos that ensues when it’s stolen from its maker.