After the American Revolution, Jonathan Zane became a celebrated scout on the frontier. His adventurous spirit and love of the wild led him to Fort Henry, scene of countless Indian attacks. Farmers had been murdered, women abducted, cabins burned. Zane teamed with legendary scout Lewis Wetzel to mete out justice to Indians and outlaws, and settlers began to enjoy the lush Ohio Valley in peace.

The Panhandle was a lonely purple range land, unfenced, and wind swept. Bill Smith, cattleman, threw up a cabin and looked at the future with hopeful eyes. One day while plowing almost out of sight of his little home - which that morning he had left apprehensively owing to an impending event - he espied his wife Margaret coming along the edge of the plowed field. She had brought his lunch this day, despite his order to the contrary.

Trueman Rock is a daring young cowboy and rider. Six years ago he had to leave the cowtown of Wagontongue because of a history of gunfights and run-ins with bad hombres. Since then, he's become a man who only uses his gun when he needs to, on rustlers and crooks. Now, he's returning to his hometown. But things have changed. The town and its people aren't what they used to be. He expects to find some of his enemies there to welcome him, but instead finds they're all dead. In their place is the Preston family.

It's 1871 in the contented Mormon town of Cottonwoods, Utah, and Elder Tull wants to marry wealthy rancher Jane Withersteen so desperately that he's willing to use the water supply - the precious lifeblood of the land - to force her hand. But that was before a mysterious, lone gunman called Lassiter showed up...

In this 1920 best seller, Milt Dale, a lone camper, overhears a conversation that persuades him to leave his forest paradise to save a young woman from certain doom.