Showing results by author "Lauran Paine" in All Categories

Walt Hodge had delivered 80 horses to Whipple Barracks for the Army, and he wasn’t in a big hurry to get home. He traveled down the Saginaw Mountains and into the upland cow country of Sunflower, Arizona, seeking only a cold glass of beer, food, and a bed for himself, along with feed for his horse. He should have listened and turned around when he asked the hostler what was going on and was told: “Trouble, mister. Bad trouble.” 

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.

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. 

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.

Deadwood, Dakota Territory, was filled with luckless miners, diggers, and more than its share of lawlessness, and more often than not, there was nothing Marshal Fred Nolan and his two deputy marshals, Wentworth and Grubb, could do. So when a teen hustler, known as "Gitalong" because of his crippled leg, was hoorawed by a trio of Texas drovers, the law wasn’t called in. Besides, two strangers had come to Gitalong’s aid, confronting the drovers and forcing them to give Gitalong three silver dollars. While it was the most money he'd ever had, he knew it would only bring him trouble.

This Western duo from Lauran Paine includes tales of murder, cattle rustling and lawmen. Two stories with mystery at their hearts.

Though elderly buffalo hunter Sam Sloan doesn't know it when he sets out on his quest for a spirit vision and a final resting place, something is drawing him towards a fateful meeting - a meeting with his destiny.

This Western duo contains tales of a wounded priest, reunited with his estranged daughter, and a town desperately trying not to let a shipment of rifles fall into the wrong hands.

Sheriff Doyle Bannion tries to keep the peace in Perdition Wells, Texas, when a shooting claims the life of an innocent bystander. When a shooting takes place at the Union Eagle Saloon, Dale McAfee, foreman of John Rockland's mighty Texas Star Ranch, kills a range rider working for Clell Durham, a free-graze cowman. It's a fair fight, but it's marked by a tragic accident: The bullet that killed Durham's rider went through his body and killed an aged swamper.

Samuel Patton lost his wife to lung fever two years ago. Now, suffering from lung fever himself and closer to eternity every day, he is traveling south through the mountains with his small son and daughter, hoping somewhere in this savage land he can find a good home for them before time runs out. When the two kids find an unconscious man, the three tend to his wounds, care for his horse, and load him into their wagon. Samuel finds a cache of money in the saddlebags of the man the children have named Mr. Black, and he is certain they have taken an outlaw under wing.

It was dusk when Todd Duncan sighted the man and his camp at a small oasis on the edge of the desert. Duncan, on his way to New Mexico to find work, knew better than to barge into a stranger's camp. After riding in and dismounting, he decided to make coffee before waking the stranger. When he called to the man, there was no response, so he walked over to find the man dead from a gunshot wound. It is then that he finds himself surrounded by Sheriff Matt Berryhill and his posse, their guns drawn.

Toby Lincoln is an orphan fending for himself in the rough Southwest. Falsely accused of horse stealing, Toby spends two years in a Colorado prison. Once free, Toby heads to New Mexico territory where he makes himself a new life on a ranch owned by Senora Monteverde. Toby kills the Colorado prison guard who had killed his friend in prison and is now sought by federal marshals with an extradition order. But for the first time in his life, Toby has friends who'll do anything to save him.

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....

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

When innocent Frank Travis gets killed because he’s thought to be a suspect for a robbery, his brother looks to seek revenge in the title story of this Western trio.