Showing results by narrator "Rusty Nelson" in All Categories

Perhaps no other figure in American history is more shrouded in myth and legend than David ("Davy") Crockett, the Tennessee frontiersman whose death at the Alamo in 1836 ensured his place in the Valhalla of American heroes. Crockett himself was responsible for much of the folklore about his life. A gregarious, fun-loving man, he was more than capable of spinning tall tales over a "horn" of liquor.

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.

John Whyte, Pinkerton detective, war hero, and banished son of an English Earl, undertakes the difficult assignment of discovering who is responsible for a series of deadly gold shipment robberies. Along with his faithful servant and companion, Kahm Singh, a retired Sikh warrior, and assisted by Curly Bill Williams, a happy-go-lucky Texan, John travels to Denver in the company of Rafe Wallace, the man who hired the Pinkerton's in a desperate attempt to save his gold operations from a vicious gang of cutthroats.

In 1879, Steve Dancy sells his New York shop and ventures west to explore and write a journal about his adventures. Though he's not looking for trouble, Dancy's infatuation with another man's wife soon embroils him in a deadly feud with Sean Washburn, a Nevada silver baron. Infuriated by the outrages of two hired thugs, the shopkeeper kills both men in an impulsive street fight.

Chance Ketcham is a drifter, a cowboy who is always looking for greener pastures. After a card game with Benny Gellerman, a man good with a gun, but bad with cards, Ketcham decides it is time to head out again. He finds a place to bed down on a lonely New Mexico farm run by old Corely Mattlin and his widowed daughter-in-law, Margaret. Ketcham has his eye on pretty Margaret, but he'd better keep his eyes open wide for trouble....

Don Pedro Garcia believes the drunken Captain Sanchez' claim that the Don's only son is still alive and living among the savages in New Spain's uncharted wilderness.

Matt Anderson was dead, shot down in a bank hold-up that shocked the small community of Bozeman, Montana. At least the townsfolk thought he was dead. A case of mistaken identity may have saved Matt's life, but it would have to be a life lived in exile.

Wesley Crocker is accused of the murder of young Maria Ibarra, who was found near the "camping place" of the drifter. Crocker's account of the previous night leads Undersheriff Bill Gastner to more troubling questions.

No one in Coronado, New Mexico, wanted Will Lockhart to linger in town. There were some willing to go to dire lengths to drive him out. But the lone rider from Laramie had come a thousand miles to find a gunrunner whose thirst for blood money had killed his younger brother. And Lockhart won't leave until he gets his vengeance.

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.

The unforgiving wilderness of the Rocky Mountains forced a boy to grow up fast, so Nate King taught his son, Zach, how to survive the constant hazards and hardships--and he taught him well. With an Indian war party on the prowl and a marauding grizzly on the loose, young Zach was about to face the test of his life, with no room for failure. But there was one danger Nate hadn't prepared Zach for--a beautiful girl with blue eyes.

John Whyte, the estranged, youngest brother of the Duke of Bransworth, and late Colonel of the First Brigade, Michigan Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War, is at loose ends. The war has ended and he has tragically lost his fiancée to a needless attack by a wayward confederate soldier. He decides to visit to his friend, General Phil Sheridan, in Chicago, where the Civil War hero has been assigned as Commander of the Western Territories.

Strong mountain men like Nate King risked everything to carve a new world from the frontier, and they weren't about to give it up without a fight. But when some friendly Crows asked Nate to help them rescue a missing girl from a band of murderous Lakota, he set off on a journey that would take him to the end of the trail - and possibly the end of his life.

Wolf Caulder had once saved Johnny Reno's life, and Reno had helped him complete his 10-year quest for vengeance upon his family's murderers. Then one day, Caulder surprised Reno and his gang as they were robbing a bank. Suddenly everything changed! Caulder found himself faced with the hardest and most dangerous manhunt of his life. All along the trail, Caulder must wrestle with one question: could he kill the man whose life he once saved?

This is part of The Spanish Bit Saga.

When they mastered the ways of the "Elk Dog," the horse, the band prospered. Yet they knew the old traditional ways must not die. Owl's father had changed the lives of The People bringing the horse from his native Spain. Now the younger son of the legendary chief must make his own reputation by learning the way of the buffalo from an ancient medicine man.

Savage and dangerous, the unexplored Rockies hid threats that could kill even the most experienced mountain men. For mountain man Nathaniel King, helping stranded travelers had become common. But when he takes in a pair of strangers who have lost their way, his kindness is repaid with vile treachery.

Our American West, Volume 2 begins with America’s first colonizers, the prairie dogs, and how out on the ranges they were so hated by ranchers that they were almost made extinct. Conestoga Wagons were once called “prairie schooners” crossing America long before the famed Pony Express. The indomitable courage of Sarah Winnemucca, the “Prairie Princess” rivals that of a tall Swede named Showshoe Thompson who skied the snowy river passes of the Sierra Nevadas.

Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you’ll find entertaining. "The Roadrunner – Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked Calamity Jane lived up to her reputation as the West’s most infamous outlaw woman. “The Donner Party – Frozen Horror” describes the horror that led to cannibalism. The 49er Gold Rush ruined the lives of two ambitious and well-intentioned men, John Augustus Sutter and John Marshal...

In Our American West, Volume 1, discover humor, tragedy, and courage in every one of these delightful stories. Gary McCarthy has been writing about the American West for 30 years and these are some of his favorite topics written - not for the expert or scholar - but for all the armchair admirers of thing historically written.

Jake "Griz Killer" Lyman was pure mountain man right through. He has made a home for his wife Rachel and adopted son Daniel in the finest place on earth, with room to live and breathe free. Yet he could read the sign of things to come, and wasn't afraid to face what he'd flushed out. He could see, even in 1835, that the whole grand mountain man way of life was ending.