Showing results by author "William W Johnstone" in All Categories

They rode into town like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Four armed outlaws bringing their own brand of hell to Paris, Texas. First they rob the First National Bank. Then they take a woman hostage as insurance. When Perley Gates learns that local waitress Becky Morris is in the hands of these tough customers, with only his friend Possum he rides to get her back. Problem is, the outlaws are heading toward the Red River--straight into Indian Territory. That's where the ranch hands draw the line. But Perley won't give up.

Two outlaw brothers have been leaving a blood-trail on their way to infamy on the western frontier. Until bounty hunter Luke Jensen catches one of the black-hearted Kroll brothers away from his gang. But while Luke is trying to get Mordecai Kroll from jail to justice, he's ambushed by the Kroll gang and taken prisoner. And that draws Luke's own brother, Smoke Jensen, into the fight, guns drawn....

It didn't matter that the warrant was years old, or that Smoke Jensen had been cleared of all charges. A Texas bounty hunter named Bill Pike believed he could still collect a $10,000 reward for killing Jensen - and he intended to do just that. But when Pike and his men came calling, Jensen was nowhere to be found. So they took the next best thing - Smoke's woman - left behind a ransom note, and headed up into the Rocky Mountains.

What the vicious Utah Jack Grubbs would really kill for just rode into town: Smoke Jensen...and a small fortune in rawhide. As if that wasn't trouble enough, Chief Iron Claw's bloodthirsty Cheyenne warriors have just appeared on the horizon. It isn't long before a war between the white man's greed and the red man's savagery turns the peaceful Bighorn Mountains into a simmering powder keg...and Smoke Jensen is just the man to set off the explosion.

The gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana is the kind of backwater hole less famous for the folks that live there than the ones who die there - like Janey Jensen, Smoke Jensen's sister. Smoke never would have gone there if it hadn't been for her estate. But that isn't the only thing the Mountain Man's got to settle. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove. The man who owns Red Light - lock, stock and barrel - is six feet of trouble looking for somebody like Smoke to bring out the worst in him.

"Stay the hell out of Fort Worth." Those were the last words uttered by a dying man who was the boomtown's most recent sheriff. Rail-thin and half starved, desperate cowpuncher Jess Casey ignores the travel advice. Instead, Jess not only enters Fort Worth, he becomes the new sheriff, inheriting the body-riddled little slice of heaven called Hell's Half Acre, the wide-open, deadliest piece of real estate on the American frontier.

Sixkiller has come to Ringgold, Wyoming, on the trail of Bart Skillern, a vicious murderer he's been carefully stalking for weeks. But before Sixkiller can strike, Skillern takes a job with the town's duly elected mayor, a politician so corrupt that the only way to get near him is by being even more corrupt. So Sixkiller takes a job as a hired gun and sets out to destroy the mayor's gang from inside out.

Frank Morgan survived his first trip to Alaska. Barely. Now, in Western Canada, Morgan and a band of survivors encounter an arch enemy with a fortune in ill-gotten gains - money he'll use to supply murderous Metis rebels with stolen U.S. Army Gatling guns to use for a bloodbath - and the Last Gunfighter is now in their way. But before the rebels can kill him, a daring U.S. secret agent joins his side. In a harsh and untamed land, Frank Morgan will soon face the ultimate battle for survival - before an all-out civil war explodes.

Business is booming in Chirichua Junction, on the edge of a great northern river basin. But with cattlemen lined up against sheep men, the land has turned into a war zone and the town constable is a dirty as they come. Fresh from a violent confrontation with a fellow manhunter, Frank Morgan is called to Chirichua Junction by his old Civil War commander - and arrives just as an angry rancher is taking the law into this own hands. Suddenly, good men and bad are poised to kill.

When Frank Morgan sets up camp in a lush valley in Montana, the last thing he expects to see is fires lighting up the night sky as fields, farms, and homes are torched by gunslicks hired by two powerful ranchers. For the ranchers, the battle lines have been drawn in the form of newly settled farmland that's cutting through the ranges, separating cattle from grazing land and water. But the settlers are breaking no law and no one is going to prevent them from building their homes and becoming a real town.

It starts with a prison break in Missouri. When notorious bank robber Ansel McCoy busts out, he teams up with five other outlaws. Then he and his gang rob a bank in Kansas. Now they’re crossing state lines into Oklahoma Indian Territory. And that’s where US Marshal Will Tanner steps in.

The bear seems harmless—at first. Just a lost and confused grizzly poking around Big Rock. Then the killings begin. A horse wrangler is mangled. A rancher mauled. Then a bartender in the heart of town is found clawed to a bloody pulp. Now every man in Big Rock is taking up arms to hunt down the beast before it strikes again—which worries the local sheriff. He’s afraid this amateur hunting party could turn into a mass funeral real fast. So he asks Smoke Jensen to help keep everyone calm and contain the panic. Unfortunately, it’s too late. The panic is out of control. And the hunt is on . . .

A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock -and the Cattle Raisers Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they’re the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who’s been arrested for the murders.

Almost overnight, they take over the Springerville. They snatch up the real estate. Turn old-fashioned stores into fancy boutiques. Transform the schools. And bring crime and corruption with them. Now one of these invaders—a predatory media mogul from New York—is running for mayor and plans to turn Springerville into a sprawling urban enclave . . . just like the ones the northerners left behind . . . Not if Gus Fuller can stop it. A former army sergeant and lifelong townie, Gus runs the old luncheonette his grandfather built—and plans to give the media mogul a run for his money.

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.

The Spencer family is part of a wagon train passing through Chugwater, Wyoming, bound for the valley of Longshot Basin. Unfortunately, the trail that leads there has been buried under an avalanche. The only route the homesteaders can take is the infamous Nightmare Trail—a treacherous, terrifyingly steep and narrow mountainside path that has claimed many lives. If that wasn’t dangerous enough, the trail is also a killing ground for the outlaw Hardcastle gang. The disreputable Arkansas Ozark clan don’t take kindly to anyone trespassing on their road without paying—in blood.

Big Rock, Colorado, has seen its share of wagon trains pass through town, but never one like this. For starters, it's led by a woman—a sweet southern belle named Annabelle—and the passengers are young Civil War widows and orphans. The only man on board is Annabelle's father, a former colonel blinded in the war. They're on their way to Purgatory Butte, Wyoming, to run the ranch the colonel inherited. Smoke's wife, Sally Jensen, thinks it's a noble goal and wants to help the women out—by volunteering her husband's protection on the treacherous journey north. In spite of his doubts, Smoke agrees.

During a trip back east for a family reunion, Preacher learns that even the civilized Midwest can attract a motherlode of trouble...especially when a gang of local bully boys decide to pick a fight. Now wealthy landowner Elam Parks lies dead - and there's a $5,000 reward on the head of the man accused: the first mountain man. The fortune in blood money has dispatched a small army of bounty hunters after Preacher. Now, back in his once-peaceful homestead in the High Lonesome, as he sights down the barrel of his '33 Hall North breechloader, Preacher is ready for target practice.

Building a ranch takes heart and grit. Smoke and Sally Jensen are more than capable of meeting the challenges of shaping the land, raising the livestock, and establishing their brand. But Smoke wasn’t always an entrepreneur. He’s more apt to settle accounts with a fast draw than a checkbook. And when he learns his old friend Preacher has been ambushed by outlaws, he wastes no time saddling up and hitting the vengeance trail with his fellow mountain men Audie and Nighthawk.

The completion of a new railroad line from Colorado to Texas is a dream come true for Smoke Jensen and the other ranchers of Big Rock. But this dream turns into their worst nightmare when the first herd they load onto the train is stolen by a vicious gang of kill-crazy rustlers. This is no ordinary train robbery. It’s an inferno of slaughter that includes the friendly rancher who volunteered to take Smoke’s place on the trip. Now Smoke is saddling up and riding out—to get the prairie rats who murdered his friend.