Showing results by author "William Johnstone" in All Categories

The Lucky Lizard is bad luck. Not that the Nevada mine is empty; it’s full of silver. But the man who thinks he owns it fair and square is in for a very unpleasant surprise — a ruthless, hard driving Easterner named Dex Brighton shows up with a seemingly valid claim. Town marshal Frank Morgan has his suspicions and sends for some San Francisco legal eagles. They don’t make it to Buckskin alive....

Buckskin, Nevada, was once a boomtown, then died a peaceful death. But when a fresh vein of silver is struck, Frank Morgan lets himself get pinned with a tin badge at the worst possible time. It's not the petty swindlers, or the stray murderer or two that will give Morgan problems. Instead, Buckskin is heating up from a miners strike, industrial sabotage, a hostile state militia, and an outlaw gang that decides the time is ripe for an all-out assault on the town.

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.

In California, Frank Morgan nearly found a home. But now he’s pulled up stakes and hit the road again, aiming to reach the high desert of Arizona. For Frank, the plan changes when he steps into a saloon in a dusty boom town called Los Angeles. That’s where he learns that his nemesis, Val Dooley, has found a new business: the selling of young women into prostitution, with the victims as young as 12 years old and the survivors ending up drugged and beaten.

With his legend dogging him everywhere he goes, Frank Morgan longs for a place to settle down. His choice is a remote corner of untamed Northern California, a land of towering trees and rugged hills. But for Frank, the haven is a hell. A man who is his exact look-alike has been terrorizing the local population and when the townspeople get their hands on Frank, a hangman's rope is sure to follow. If he's going to be taken for an outlaw, Frank Morgan is going to act like one.

Luke Jensen has seen some sorry-looking bounties in his time, but this one takes the cake. A wanted poster is offering a reward of one dollar and 42 cents - plus one busted harmonica - to capture Three-Fingered Jack McKinney. Turns out, McKinney's 12-year-old son Aaron wants revenge on his daddy for abandoning him and his mom. The reward is all the money Aaron can scrape together. Luke can't say no to the poor boy - or his beautiful mother - so he agrees to go after McKinney and his bank-robbing gang.

When Luke Jensen traps fugitive Ben Craddock in Arapaho Springs, he's ready to collect on his bounty. But the job's not done - not by a long shot. A raid by a savage gang known as the Legion of Fire has left the peaceful settlement looted, burned to the ground, and the ashes scoured for female hostages - including the marshal's daughter. For Luke this is more than a hunt. It's now a rescue.

It's the kind of job Luke Jensen hates. A millionaire mine owner is willing to pay $5,000 to the man who captures the half-breed outlaw Tom Eagle. Normally, Luke would turn down an offer like this-it smacks too much of being a hired gun. But when the millionaire tells him that Eagle is responsible for killing his son, Luke agrees to take on the job. Which means he'll have to take the road to hell itself - a.k.a. Hard Rock, Montana. Hard Rock is supposed to be a ghost town. But when Luke arrives, the ghosts are alive and well - and gunning for his hide.

For Smoke and his daughter Denny, life on the Sugarloaf Ranch is more valuable than all the gold in the world. Which works out fine, since all the gold mines in Big Rock were squeezed dry years ago. Even so, that won’t stop a pair of businessmen from the East from trying to squeeze out a little more. One of them has developed a newfangled method for extracting gold—something called “hydraulics”—and they’ve bought up all the old mines to do it. Smoke isn’t sure what to think of. Especially when they hire a small army of gunfighters to protect their mines from sabotage.

There’s a storm brewing in Oklahoma Territory, and this time, it’s deadly serious. Local cattle ranches are being targeted by Texas rustlers—and the only man who can keep it from turning into a bloodbath is U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner. The newly married lawman hates to leave his beautiful bride Sophie, but duty calls—for better or worse. In Tanner’s experience, it’s usually worse. An unexpected confrontation with outlaws is just the bloody beginning. Then an escaped convict catches wind of the fact that Tanner killed his brother. Now Will’s really in the crosshairs.

A legend among bounty hunters, Luke Jensen is called to track down a deranged Yankee-turned-outlaw with a burning passion to torch the prairies, torment the townsfolks, and turn all he sees into a smoldering cinder....

Smoke Jensen’s daughter Denny can outride, outrope, and outshoot any man who gets in her way. But being a pretty woman, Denny sometimes attracts the attention of unsavory suitors. Like the lecherous Count Malatesta. Denny met the seductive Sicilian on her trip to Europe - and almost fell head over heels for the swindler. What’s he doing in America?

There are two kinds of traps in the Old West. One is the kind that Preacher and his buddy, Charlie, use to catch a mountain-load of fur pelts. The other is the kind that Charlie steps into — a trap set by a low-life gambler and his seductive partner in crime to swindle Charlie out of his fur money. Preacher hates to see a good friend get robbed. So he sets off after the grifters — on a riverboat bound for New Orleans.

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.

A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond. But while the prized Winchester is wandering the West - aimed, fired, battered and bartered - Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann is hunting for the outlaw who robbed the train in Texas.

The train grinds to a halt somewhere in the Indian Nations, and the bandits get onboard. They take everything on the train worth stealing and gun down a guard to make their escape — just another notch on the belt for Ben Trout and Zack Larsen, two of the most savage killers in the west. US Deputy Marshal Ed Pine follows them to Muskogee. There the trail runs cold, and Ed Pine disappears.

When Duff MacCallister journeys to Texas to deliver 100 head of angus cattle, he finds a land on fire. Unruly, lawless teams of fence cutters, branded Blue Devils by the locals, are rampaging across grazing land and cutting fences in the name of an eastern land company. The ranchers are fighting back, and Duff joins the fray. But the fight leads to Austin, and into an even deadlier mission.

Sheriff Jess Carey and his oddball band of sidekicks have pulled off the impossible, taming Hell’s Half Acre, the most lawless town in Texas, infamous for murder, mayhem, prostitution, and every random act of bloodshed imaginable. Now the no-good politicians in Austin have decided it’s cheaper to dump hordes of criminals on Jess Carey’s town than hanging ‘em. In one dreadful week, it seems as if the gates of Hell have burst open.

Across the border is another wanderer and another tribe. Preacher’s old enemy, Willie Deaver, plies a band of Indians with the deadliest combination possible: whisky, guns, and bullets — then directs them to try out their killing tools on the Assiniboine. The raid reaps a harvest of devastating death, bloodshed, and helpless captives. Deaver is all the more delighted when he learns Preacher is among the fallen.