Showing results by narrator "Rusty" 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.

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.

Mountain man Nathaniel King and other settlers in the Rockies are forever on the lookout for possible dangers - and always ready to match death with death. But when a marauding band of killers and thieves kipnaps his wife and children, Nate has finally run into enemies who've pushed his skill and cunning to the limit.

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.

When the Reverend John Burke was trapped in perilous Blackfoot territory, Nathaniel King had to save the man, or he'd bear the brand of a coward until the day he died.

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.

After rescuing Solomon Cain from an Indian death trap, mountain man Nathanial King is left stranded by the ungrateful man in the wilderness, where he hooks up with a Ute brave who is determined to kill Cain.

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.

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...

Best known for his association with the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir also explored the southern states, Alaska, and the Mojave Desert. His studies generated volumes of poetic, evocative writings. As America expanded westward, Muir witnessed the plunder of the land and became a driving force in efforts to protect the natural world. He influenced four U.S. Presidents to sponsor legislation that protected forests and established or expanded America's national parks.