Showing results by author "Richard Wheeler" in All Categories

Meagher County, Montana, is Hereford country. All the ranchers are raising Angus or Hereford cattle - all except Sam Hook. He is the only holdout, continuing to herd longhorns as he has for years. Since everyone uses public range, there is no way to keep Hook's longhorn bulls from breeding with the Hereford herds, lowering their value.

One day, Gladstone Brass spotted buzzards circling, and curiosity led him to investigate. He found a dead burro and an injured Bitter Bowler, his enemy, with his revolver trained on Brass. Bowler claimed he had broken his leg and couldn't move. He wanted Brass' water. When Brass refused, Bowler shot Brass' burro, Tia Maria, then told him the next shot would be for him if he didn't leave his water and supplies and get more water and something he could use for a crutch.

First, there is Aristotle Scrimshaw who had left his wife and children on their small farm in Wisconsin to pick up some cash in the bustling goldfields of Virginia City. He had done well, buying up claims and collecting gold worth more than $100,000 - but now there is trouble back home and he must get there immediately. Then there is Angelica Ramirez, who had left her abusive husband to become the most prosperous madam in the territory, but now she wants to be done with the life and begin anew.

During the 1886 Montana drought, Harvard-educated John Quincy Putnam had Federal Law on his side, and desperate, angry neighbors surrounding him. A hard 1887 winter follows, and ranchers pay the price for overgrazing. Texas fever, foreign investors, and strong-arm cattlemen's associations all mount up against "Quin" Putnam when, under the law, he runs strings of barbed wire along two sides of his range.

From the moment Abner Dent spotted Eve in a Maiden dance hall, he knew he wanted her for his wife. He promised her everything and kept his word. He built her the finest white house in Judith basin and ordered the finest furnishings.

Two young men in the gold fields of California spend a last evening together as one of them, very sick, confronts his own imminent death. The tenderness between them may seem idealized, but you understand by listening to this story how premature death from accident and disease haunted the lives of far more westerners than death by violence.

Life hasn't always been easy for March and Kermit McPhee, but things are looking up. March gives birth to a healthy son, and their small gold mine is looking better and better as Kermit blasts his way along a good seam of ore. Then Kermit is crushed by a cave-in. As soon as her husband dies, crooks are at March's door, eager to get their hands on the mine. The peaceful town of Marysville, Montana, is peaceful no more.

From the very beginning, Sam Stop was an enigma to the people living in Pony, Montana. Stop didn't look like a banker, dress like a banker, or act like a banker. So, while there were some initial suspicions about Stop's background, people came to respect and then trust the reclusive founder of Pony's local bank. Soon the bank became the main depository for the assets of the Pony Consolidated Mining Company. Then one day, everything begins to change.

He was a peace-loving man forced to fight for his kin and his rights against the U. S. Army. In the 40 years since Richard Lamb had come to Montana, he had built a thriving trading post where he lived with his Blackfoot Indian wife, their children, and grandchildren. It was a hard, but happy existence. That is until "they" came....