The life of a mail-order bride was no breeze. It seemed to Laurie Bonnet she couldn't do even the simplest thing right. She couldn't make a cup of coffee fit for a dog, so how was she going to help her man in a war over his land? When things get too tough, Lauire decides to flee back home. On the trail she gets lost and meets up with a mysterious old man who teaches her a few things about love and courage. And she'll need plenty of both when she returns to stand by her husband. Because now the Miller clan has hired themsleves a gunman to run Steve Bonnet off his land - or put him under the ground.

"Medicine Ground" is a short story from L'Amour's hardcover, Valley of the Sun, - previously unavailable anywhere!

The gallows are going up in Canyon Gap and wild-spirited Leo Carver is going to swing. A known troublemaker without an alibi, Leo certainly had motives for holding up the stage and killing two men, yet he still proclaims his innocence. There's a lot of folks who want to believe him, because although Leo Carver is a hard-living, free-spending maverick, he is the kind of man the West needs.

When Mac Marcy got it into his head to run his own cattle ranch, he spent five long years working for Ben Tanner at the Bar 7 to save up enough money to do just that. His dream finally realized, Mac stakes his claim on a deserted ranch in a nearby valley, and rides over to say hello to his new neighbors at the Flying K. Thing is, Mac finds more than he bargained for in the owner's pretty daughter, Sally Kenyon, who seems eager to help him get started with his own place. What Mac hadn't counted on, though, was the jealous foreman at the Flying K, Vin Ricker, who had plans of his own where Sally and the Flying K were concerned.

Few men were as deadly, or troublesome, with a gun as the Mojave Kid. Ab Kale, marshal of Hinkley, had warned the Kid to stay away from his town. Even as he trained his own adopted son, Riley, to handle a gun, he worried for both of them. He knew the Kid was the bloodthirsty sort who would one day force a showdown. But he couldn't know when, or prepare Riley for the test of his young life.

Folks far and wide know that the Cactus Kid can handle a pistol with the best of them. But for all his skill and coolness under fire, there's jut one small weakness he can't seem to overcome - and it may prove the death of him.

This priceless collection of once lost stories brings to life a time of desperate violence and true courage in a wide-open country of fortune seekers and dreamers, lawbreakers and pioneers. A newly sworn-in marshal must outwit a mysterious killer who's fleecing his neighbors while secretly cutting their throats....A young drifter, wounded in a gunfight, finds a chance to change his ways - but he must be willing to pay with his life....A fiercely independent woman and a mysterious stranger take a desperate stand against those out to drive her from her home.

When a stranger named Handy offered to track down Cass Bailey's stolen money for a stake in the CB range, Bailey has nothing more to lose. But his pretty hot-tempered daughter, Ann, was certian that Handy couldn't find the money unless he'd had a hand in stealing it. So when Handy hit pay dirt Ann Bailey was there to send all his plans to blazes. Now he faced a shoot-out with the pack of villains who held both Ann and his future hostage - and a challenge to prove he wasn't a theif to the woman he loved.

Most folks would call Kim Sartain an easygoing, peace-loving man. But the few who crossed the young drifter knew there was nothing he liked better than a good fight. When cattleman Jim Targ challenges Sartain's right to ride across an unclaimed stretch of meadow, Sartain decides he'll do better than ride through: He'll put down stakes there and homestead the land. So there's more at risk than land and pride when Targ hires a gunman to teach Sartain a permanent - and deadly - lesson

Life on an Ohio farm couldn't hold young Bill Carey. He wanted the adventure he knew waited in the territories to the west. He'd drifted into the outlaw life and found himself shot up, a lawman on his trail, holed up on a small farm near the lair of Tabat Ryerson. Ryerson, the man who'd introduced him to cattle rustling and bank robbery, was a cold-blooded killer, the man who'd turned the sweet young woman who'd saved Carey's life into an unwilling accomplice.

Cattle rancher Ben Kerr wants Jim and Jack Casady's prime farmland real bad. He's offered them good money, but they won't sell. When the Casady brothers find Kerr's cattle grazing on their land, surrounded by broken fences, anger rises up like bile in Jack Casady's gut, and tempers flare.

After an absence of several years, Tack Gentry heads home to his Uncle John's G-Bar Ranch. But when he arrives, the entire town has changed. What's more, strangers have taken over the G-Bar - strangers who claim that Tack's uncle died in a gunfight. But Tack knows better. He knows his uncle was a strict Quaker - a man who never even owned a gun. The new sheriff in town wants Tack to get out of town, pronto - but Gentry vows to stay put and fight for the land he believes is his.

Ever since his father died, 14-year-old Tom Fairchild has helped his mother keep the ranch going. Soon it would be time to gather the cattle to market, and Tom was sent to ride into town to hire a hand. When he chose a stranger named Riley, the townspeople, the former hands, and the local law didn't approve. Worse yet, the sheriff said Riley was a former convict. But Tom didn't care. It was the first real decision Tom ever made on his own.

Ranch foreman Ward McQueen recognizes trouble when he sees it - and trouble is what the Texan sees when he spies the tracks of a wounded man in the middle of the big Tumbling K spread. In town, he learns that a tinhorn gambler has just won the ranch next to the Tumbling K in a dirty card game - and is turning his oily gaze toward the K's pretty owner, Miss Ruth Kermitt.

Cattleman Jum Gatlin isn't the kind of man who goes looking for a fight. But he never turns away when one comes looking for him. And that's just what happens when he finds himself mistaken for another man - a man who has some very dangerous enemies.