Showing results by author "William Johnstone" in All Categories

After spending most of his young life driving cattle from Texas to Nevada, Will Tanner is ready to wash the trail dust from his throat. Maybe it was fate that brought him to the Morning Glory Saloon on the border of Indian Territory - or just plain bad luck - because right after his sits down three rough-looking characters walk into the bar with vengeance in their eyes, guns at their sides...and fingers on their triggers. The trio's target is the famous US Deputy Marshal Dove who arrested one of their kin - and who's sitting in the bar near Will Tanner.

As a teenager, John McMasters won the Medal of Honor as a sniper for the Union Army during the Civil War. Thirty years later, McMasters lives a peaceful life in the Arizona Territory, raising a family and running cattle. These days, he needs eyeglasses to hit a distant target. But that doesn't stop his wife and four children from buying him a special present for his 50th birthday: a beautiful new Remington shotgun. Turns out, he's going to need it....The Butcher gang has come to town. By the time McMasters learns of their arrival, they've invaded his ranch and slaughtered his family.

In Tennessee, 17-year-old Breckinridge Wallace knew the laws of nature. When his life was in danger, he showed a fearless instinct to fight back. Killing a thug who was sent to kill him got Breckinridge exiled from his Smoky Mountain home. Brutally wounding an Indian attacker earned him an enemy for life....

The great state of Texas is a land of opportunity. For outlaws. And horse thieves. And cattle rustlers. Not to mention bank robbers, train robbers, and anything-that-ain’t-nailed-down robbers. The state’s governor, Richard B. Hubbard, is at the end of his rope. He wants to clean up Texas once and for all—and he’s desperate enough to try something crazy: hire a man who can do what the Texas Rangers can’t. A man not tied down by a wife or children. Or rules. Who’s not afraid to go outside the law.

In his mountain man days, Elwood "Firestick" McQueen was practically a living legend. His hunting, tracking, and trapping skills were known far and wide. But it was his deadly accuracy with a rifle that earned him the Indian name "Firestick". His two best buddies are Malachi "Beartooth" Skinner - whose knife was as fatal as a grizzly's chompers - and Jim "Moosejaw" Hendricks, who once wielded the jawbone of a moose to crush his enemies in the heat of battle.

It's the dawn of a new century. But on the vast Sugarloaf Ranch not much has changed since legendary gunfighter Smoke Jensen and his wife Sally tamed the land two decades ago. Raising cattle is still a dangerous business - and just as deadly as ever. When Smoke is injured swapping bullets with some cow thieves, Sally puts out a call for help to Matt, Ace, and the rest of the Jensen clan. But time is running out. The bloodthirsty rustlers are ready to strike again - and there are lots more of them. And the Sugarloaf's last defense is Smoke and Sally's next of kin....

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But old cowboys? That’s a different story—especially when those cowboys are trail-hardened cattlemen like Casey Tubbs and Levi Doolin. When these longtime buddies learn that their bosses are getting out of the beef business, they figure it’s probably time to retire anyway. Nothing left to do now but deliver the last two-thousand cows to Albilene and collect their pay. There’s just one problem. Their bosses’ lawyer is skipping town with all the workers’ cash—which means Tubbs and Doolin have one last job to do...

Missouri, 1860. Rumors of war between the North and South are spreading across the land. In rural Green County, many of the farmers are already choosing sides. But not John Zachary. His loyalties lie with his family first - and his heart is telling him to go west. Hoping to build a new life in the fertile valleys of Oregon, he convinces his best friend, Emmitt Braxton, to pack up their families and join him on a wagon train across the Oregon Trail. The journey will be long and hard.

Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are lifelong drifters who keep one eye on the horizon, one finger on the trigger, and one foot out the door. Roaming the West is what keeps them young, or so Scratch tells Bo. But when they save the life of Cyrus Keegan - the owner of a matrimonial agency - they receive an unexpected proposal that's hard to resist. Keegan needs to deliver five mail order brides to a mining town in New Mexico Territory. All Scratch and Bo have to do is get these gals to the church on time - and alive, if possible.

Once upon a time in the Old West, Buck Trammel was a Pinkerton agent with a promising future. But after a tragic incident in a case gone wrong, he struck out for the wide-open spaces of Wichita, Kansas. Working as a bouncer at the Gilded Lily Saloon, he hopes to stay out of trouble. But soon enough, his gun skills are put to the test. The Bower gang shows up, turning a friendly card game with a Wyoming cattle baron into a killer-takes-all shooting match. Buck saves the cattle baron's life, but at the cost of two Bower men. That's when Deputy Wyatt Earp arrives.

Crater City, New Mexico, is a bustling mining town brimming with the stench of men hungry to get rich the old fashioned way - by killing the competition. Dennis Conroy is the owner of the biggest saloon in town, and he needs a few good sharpshooters to help protect surveyors laying out a route for a spur line before his rival Hugh Thornton beats him to it. Joe Buckhorn's handy with a gun, so he takes the job. Against his best advice, he'll also take a liking to the boss's daughter. Worse, Buckhorn starts wondering exactly what kind of man he's working for.

Preacher is heading home to the mountains when he's approached by a wealthy European with an unusual proposition. He wants the legendary mountain man to track down his missing cousin—a reckless young woman who fled to America with her lover—and he's willing to pay a small fortune to find her. Preacher isn't one to get mixed up in the affairs of fancy foreigners, but he reluctantly agrees. The search is on. Striking westward from St. Louis, Preacher quickly begins to suspect that this search party is doomed. And this trail will lead to some very dead ends.

Rollie Finnegan is a man of few words. As a former Pinkerton agent with two decades of experience under his belt, he uses his stony silence to break down suspects and squeeze out confessions. Hence the nickname Stoneface. Over the years, he’s locked up plenty of killers. Now he’s ready to make a killing - for himself.. There’s gold in the mountains of Idaho Territory. And the town of Boar Gulch is a golden opportunity for a tough guy like Finnegan. But when he arrives, the local saloon owner is gunned down in cold blood - and Finnegan makes a cold calculation of his own.

When Ben Savage receives a telegram informing him that an old friend died - and left him his saloon - he’s not sure what to think. Western saloons are as wild as it gets, full of rowdy ranchers and cocky cowboys, high-stakes gamblers and low-life drifters, hard liquor and easy women. Then there’s the occasional outlaw gang. But when Savage travels to Buzzard’s Bluff, Texas, to check out his inheritance, he meets the saloon’s lovely manager, Rachel Baskin, and has a change of heart.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal, and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

The town got its unusual name when a pair of brokedown prospectors accidentally dropped a stick of dynamite in the Rockies—and unearthed a massive vein of silver. One of the two men dropped dead from excitement. The other one named the place "Dead Broke" in honor of his dead broke companion and declared himself mayor of a brand-new mining town. Mayor Allane Auchenleck—better known as Nugget—put Dead Broke on the map. But when the silver market takes an unexpected nosedive, the bustling boomtown goes bust. And all hell breaks loose.

As the deputy sheriff in a small Missouri town, "Slick" Parker Jones doesn't have much to do except get drunk and chase saloon girls. Life is pretty dull in Rory's Junction—until Slick sees the wanted poster for a notorious train robber. Parker's never met an actual outlaw before. He's never faced any real dangers, to be honest. But when that wanted man staggers into Parker's nightly watering hole—half dead, with a hole in his gut and a bloody map in his hand—the young deputy's life takes a wild turn . . . quite possibly fatal.

Once a respected lawman in Kansas and Oklahoma, Ty Brannigan ended his career as town marshal of Warknife while he was still young enough to marry, start a family, and raise cattle. Now nearly sixty, he’s a proud husband, father of four, and proprietor of the Powderhorn Ranch. He’s more content wrangling cows than criminals. But for every outlaw Brannigan put in jail, noosed, or left to the vultures, he made even more enemies. They’ve made the mistake of targeting his wife and children—only to discover that Ty Brannigan enforces his own law with a lightning-fast draw.

Luke Ransom and Jug Sartain, trappers for the American Fur Company, made a formidable team when they partnered up in the grueling winter wilderness of Blackfoot Country. No hostile raids by man, no brutal obstacles of nature could stop them from snaring what they came for. The nicest surprise was that Luke came home with a wife—Willow, a lovely young Crow woman.. Now, one year later, in this new trapping season of 1834, it’s Luke, Jug, and Willow who become the hunted.

1942—Granbury, Texas. A ninety-five-year-old man walks into a recruiting office with the crazy idea to enlist—and an even crazier story. He claims to be the one and only Jesse James, the infamous bank robber allegedly shot by Robert Ford sixty years earlier. Using another man's corpse to collect the reward, Ford allowed James to slip away and start a new life. Changing his name to Dalton, Jesse worked as a cattle broker in Fort Worth and fathered a pair of twins named Bill and Frank.