Showing results by author "Ralph Compton" in All Categories

Nathan Stone returns to his Virginia home to discover that the horrors of the Civil War are not over; his family has been wiped out, and their home burned by seven renegades. Nathan swears an oath on his father’s grave to find and kill each of the men responsible. He begins a lonely journey that will take him south and west, on a vengeance trail that crosses the paths of some infamous figures, including “Wild Bill” Hickok, Roy Bean, and Frank and Jesse James.

In the 1870s, as the country recovered from the War Between the States, the expansion of railroads and the discovery of gold opened the American west to both civilization and savagery. Men and women on both sides of the law were drawn by the chance to make a fortune, and there was often a big difference between Law and Justice.

Nathan Stone was a living legend in the West as a lawman, as an outlaw, as a gambler, as a wanderer through the wildest towns and terrain. He blazed a vengeance trail, giving no quarter and asking for none. Fearlessly, he played his cards and used his Colt .45s as best he could in games of chance, skill, and savagery, for stakes of life or death.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

Nathan Stone, The Gunfighter, lies dead in the street, a victim of the ruthless Sandlin gang. Behind him he leaves his guns and the son he had hardly known - a former lawman named Wes is about to teach these killers just what it means to be his father's son. Swearing vengeance, he takes up his father’s guns. But little does he know that the odds are even more against him than he thinks - and that to get revenge for a dead man, he might have to die himself.

Big Charlie Chilton knows better than to lose his temper, but when a loudmouth threatens to expose his long-buried secrets, he can't help but teach the man a lesson about being quiet. Unfortunately it turns out the man was about to make an important supply run for the town's marshal, and Marshal Watt knows just enough about Shotgun Charlie's past to draft him into service in his stead.

Nathan Stone returns to his Virginia home to discover that the horrors of the Civil War are not over; his family has been wiped out, and their home burned by seven renegades. Nathan swears an oath on his father’s grave to find and kill each of the men responsible. He begins a lonely journey that will take him south and west, on a vengeance trail that crosses the paths of some infamous figures.

Wes Stone was once a lawman. Then the Sandlin Gang shot down his father, known as The Gunfighter. Swearing vengeance, he takes up his father's guns. But little does he know that the odds are even more against him than he thinks - and that to get revenge for a dead man, he might have to die himself....

The legacy of Ralph Compton’s iconic Westerns lives on in this thrilling tale by Joseph A. West. When Apaches cut off incoming supply wagons, the citizens of Alma, New Mexico Territory, begin to panic. To save what little supplies they have left, the townsfolk decide to rid Alma of its worthless citizens - including town drunk Eddie Oates. Banished from the city, Oates is left to fend for himself with only a single rifle - and not a glass of whiskey in sight.

The Border Empire trilogy concludes, as Wes Stone’s quest for revenge leads him to destroy the plot by the Golden Dragon gang to endanger US currency by switching counterfeit coins for real ones within the walls of four different mints in the southwest. Battling long odds and high stakes, Stone and his friends El Lobo and Byron Silver must solve a double kidnapping, face a mercenary army of renegades from the Sandlin gang who are assembling in Durango, and avoid the many young hotheads who seek to add to their own reputations by challenging Wes’s skill with a gun.

Mississippi charmer Abner Mason is a professional gambler and a regular on the Delta Jack, a luxurious riverboat. But luck hasn't exactly been going Mason's way. After a disastrous loss at the tables, he owes an impossible debt to the most powerful man on the ship: mysterious, ruthless Cam Greeley. And Greeley's willing to do whatever it takes to get his fortune back - even threaten Mason's life. Now Mason has a single night to raise all the funds to pay off his debt by completing whatever ominous jobs Greeley has waiting for him. He just has to make it through alive....

All Alpine's marshal, Boyd Cooper, wants is a nice retirement, not to get a posse together to track outlaws. However, when an altercation leads to the exchange of gunfire and the spilling of outlaw blood, he doesn't have much of a choice. The outlaws fear their reputation might be at stake, so they declare revenge on the tin stars of Alpine. They're mad enough to break their own no-kill rule, and Boyd Cooper knows things could end as bloody as they started.

The life of a cowboy suits Thalis Christie just fine. A puncher for the Crescent H in Texas, he loves what he does and is damn good at it too. He doesn't even mind being away from his family - he's got good friends to keep him from getting too homesick. That is, until his folks write, imploring him to hunt down his brother, Myles, who's been shot while prospecting in the Black Hills. Thalis sets out to do his family duty and find his little brother - still alive, he hopes.

If things are quiet in the little town of Sweetwater, Marshal Fred Hitch sees no reason to make waves. But when Tyree Johnson shows up, Fred's relaxed nature is put to the test. At 15 years old, Tyree is a tough-as-nails bounty hunter with no patience for anyone calling him "boy." He's come to apprehend a killer who escaped from Cheyenne and has been hiding in plain sight in Sweetwater. Fred must ride with Tyree and his prisoner all the way to Cheyenne. The unlikely pair has a rough trail ahead of them, and as tough as Tyree is, he has some lessons to learn about the evil men do - and how to survive it.

When young Jarret Pekoe aims to bring a band of violent border-jumpers to justice, his sister hires rifleman Lem Beauchamp to scare some sense into him. But when trouble arrives, they must work together to defeat the outlaws once and for all. Jarrett Pekoe cares about two things: his ranch and his family. So when rustlers kill his kin and burn his land to the ground, Jarrett won't rest until the men responsible have their necks caught in the hangman's rope.

Frontier life is hard enough without having kids to worry about - especially for a widower like Paul Meakes. Still, he's settled where he is and resolved to stay in the small Colorado town his son and daughter call home. So when his daughter is hit by a seemingly poisoned arrow during an Indian raid, Paul is determined to track down the Comanche villains who hurt his little girl - and bring them to justice with the help of Indian hunter Hank Adley, a hired gun who's got business of his own with the tribe.

Thad Taylor is no one's idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he's disapproved of by most - especially his father. But when his father doesn't return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he's far from ready for the ordeal. Because his father is already dead. He has fallen victim to the bloody Benders - a demented family who lures travelers into their cabin way station only to rob and brutally murder them.

Rancher Ty Farraday's hunt for stray cattle takes a turn for the worse when he discovers a shallow grave and the body of wealthy Alton Winstead, the owner of the Double-Cross Ranch. Ty's first frantic thoughts are of Winstead's widow, Sue-Ellen, who picked Alton over him. Unfortunately, she chose poorly. Alton masterminded a crime and left his helpers to swing for it. Hungry for revenge, the murderous headcases have overrun the Double-Cross and are holding Sue-Ellen prisoner.

Their friendship started with a schoolyard tussle. Now the need for revenge is what binds Luke Croft and Red Connover together. When Luke taught himself how to fire a Colt, he never imagined he'd turn into a gunman. But when his stepfather's dodgy business dealings turn his life upside down, Luke asks Red to help him destroy the man who murdered his kin. The road to vengeance is long and hard, and the two friends who are barely out of boyhood will need all the help they can get if they want to catch a cold-blooded killer.

Dane Kramer looks forward to the day when his sprawling Oklahoma cattle ranch will truly be his - no strings attached. With only one more bank payment to make and a buyer in Omaha ready to pay top dollar for a herd of Herefords, he should finally have the banker, Earl Throckmorton, off his back. But Earl has a plan to keep the ranch for himself, and if he has his way, Dane's herd will never make it across the Omaha Trail - and Dane won't make it home alive.