Showing results by author "William W. 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 no sooner does he sit down than 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 U.S. Deputy Marshal Dove who arrested one of their kin - and who's sitting in the bar near Will Tanner.

In 1848, Dooley Monahan, son of struggling Iowa pioneers, went off to to pick up a new milk cow. Young Dooley never came home. Now, nearly three decades later, Dooley Monahan has become an accidental legend, managing to plant a bullet in the chest of a dangerous outlaw. All Dooley really wants is to claim his reward at a bank in Phoenix and make his way north to a gold strike he read about in a newspaper.

They are strangers in a strange land - a band of German immigrants trespassing across the Jensen family spread. Led by a baron fleeing a dark past in Germany and accompanied by a woman beautiful enough to dazzle young Matt, the pilgrims are being pursued by a pack of brutal outlaws hungry for blood, money - or maybe something else…. The Jensens are willing to help the pioneers get to the promised land in Wyoming. But they don’t know the whole story of their newfound friends, or who the outlaws really are.

Preacher is no hired killer. When a wagon train is ambushed on the Santa Fe Trail, though, he can’t say no to the St. Louis businessman willing to pay him for justice. It’s not the stolen gold that’s convinced Preacher to take the job. And it’s not the missing body of one of the wagon train’s crew, a prime suspect who may have plotted the ambush and taken off with the gold. No, it’s the suspect’s lovely fiancée, Alita Montez. She believes her boyfriend is innocent—and has run off to find him. Preacher can’t abide the idea of a young woman alone on the Santa Fe Trail.

Preacher has agreed to escort Barnaby Cooper through Dakota Territory’s hills to establish a trading post. Accompanied by his friends Lorenzo and Tall Dog, the mountain man hopes they’ll be able to protect Cooper from Sioux warriors who don’t want any white man trespassing on their sacred grounds. But the Sioux aren’t the only hostiles staking their claim in the region.

One of the best-selling Western writers of all time, William W. Johnstone established three of the genre’s most enduring characters in Matt and Smoke Jensen and their stalwart friend Preacher. In Helltown Massacre,, the family Jensen lands squarely in the crosshairs of a railroad tycoon trying to run the iron horse through Paiute territory. To protect the land, three honest men will face half a hundred hired guns—impossible odds, unless you’re a Jensen.

Jamie MacCallister remembers the —especially one brave frontiersman who died fighting there. Now the fallen veteran's granddaughter needs Jamie'sAlamo help. She's found a letter written by her grandfather with a map to the spot where Alamo legend Jim Bowie supposedly hid a fortune in silver and gold. Jamie never believed the story. Countless treasure hunters had scoured the area and come up empty handed. But his friend's granddaughter is convinced it's hidden where no one has ever dared to search-deep in the heart of Comanche country.

A gunshot wound has robbed Audubon, Texas, of its top lawman at the worst possible time. Clete Lanagan and his band of outlaws have hatched a scheme to plunder the town bank of a small fortune in railroad money. When the acting sheriff, Dalton Conyers - half-brother of Smoke’s niece Rebecca - is unable to raise a posse to hunt down Lanagan’s gang, he calls on Smoke for help. But with so much cash at stake, Lanagan won’t go down without a fight.

In the criminal underworld of Laramie County, Lucien Clay was king. He terrorized the locals, robbed the coffers, and ruled the place with an iron fist. Thankfully he’s behind bars now—along with a load of other lowlife scum—thanks to Laramie’s new sheriff, Buck Trammel. Unfortunately, Buck can only enforce the law while others specialize in working around it: namely, lawyers. And no lawyer is more crooked or corrupt than the belly-crawling snake Clay hired to get him out. By any means possible.

Smoke Jensen has seen the worst that men can do on the lawless frontier. But even the mountain man is not prepared for the outlaw band that strikes Smoke’s ranch, kidnapping Sally and the daughter of Smoke’s neighbor. Now, the women are gone and a ranch hand and his young daughter are dead.

He was raised by the mountain man called Preacher, and he was said to be the fastest gun alive. Until he hung up his gunbelts to raise a family. Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and a force of nature. But Lee Slater and his gang of low life desperadoes didn’t know that. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble for the retired gunslinger was Slater’s first mistake. Shooting Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally was his second.

The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it - when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm.

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.

The town of Bury took up a piece of Idaho Territory that was still raw, untamed frontier. It was no place for the cowardly or faint-hearted, but Smoke Jensen was neither. Nor were Stratton, Potter and Richards, the three bloodthirsty outlaws who came there to live. Or, if Smoke had his way...to die! It had been years since hired gunhands had murdered Smoke’s wife and son, but the pain was as fresh as yesterday. And so was Smoke’s need for revenge. He's come a long way to find the bandit trio responsible for his family's brutal massacre.

For the greatest trapper in the country, there’s no place like the Rocky Mountains. Preacher and his son Hawk are riding the High Lonesome when the clear mountain air is split by a girl’s savage screams. A gang of ruthless trappers has kidnapped a Crow woman, but before they escape with her, Preacher and Hawk burst out of the tree line, guns spitting fire.

For Smoke, it starts at a high-class auction for a pureblood Hereford bull. Smoke wins the bidding - and earns the hatred of Pogue Quentin, Santa Clara’s leading citizen and a man living on bloodshed and lies. Then Smoke’s friend Pearlie drifts to Santa Clara. And when Pearlie runs afoul of Quentin, all hell will break loose. Now Smoke Jensen is heading to Santa Clara to face a man who already wants him dead - but Pogue Quentin never met anything like the fire of a mountain man....

Preacher and Hawk ride out of the Rockies and into St. Louis, loaded with furs. It’s Hawk’s first trip to civilization and the moment he lays eyes on young Chessie Dayton, he’s lost in more ways than one. When Chessie unwisely signs on for a gold-hungry expedition into the lawless mountains, Hawk convinces Preacher to trail the outfit because they’re all headed straight to the sacred Indian grounds known as the Black Hills — a land of no return. To come out of it alive a lot of people will have to die.

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. First, he infiltrates the criminal underworld of the French Quarter. Then, he’s enslaved on a pirate ship heading straight to hell.

Mountain man Smoke Jensen lives by the rules of the frontier. The first rule is: the strongest survive. But when bad breaks, bad weather and bad bovines back Smoke into a corner, he needs something to go right. Instead, he faces the kind of tough luck only a gun can beat....A contract to deliver 3000 head of cattle might just do the trick. But a renegade Cheyenne warrior uses an early winter blizzard to attack Smoke and his out-gunned cowboys.

Long ago, the legendary trapper known as Preacher took shelter with the Absaroka, and fell in love with a girl called Bird in the Tree. Twenty years later, he rescues a woman and her son from an ambush by the hated Blackfoot. The woman is Birdie, and the valiant young warrior is Hawk That Soars — Preacher’s son. Now the greatest fighter on the frontier is about to go to war, to protect a family he never knew he had.