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.

In these extraordinary stories, we meet a man who is forced to defend himself by taking another’s life - and must pay for his actions in a most punishing manner; a young thrill-seeker who finally finds a place he can call home, and vows to stay there - regardless of the man who tries to stand in his way; and a drifter who honors a deathbed promise to a stranger by embarking on an unlikely mission of mercy.

Once, Frank Morgan had a wife and a future on the land — until a rich man with a grudge drove him out of Colorado. Since then, Morgan's taken up the one skill that always came easy — gunfighting — and drifted to a mining town in the New Mexico Territory. But there's nothing easy about two vicious gangs descending on the town and threatening to wreak havoc. With his reputation preceding him, Morgan is elected to stand in the outlaws' way.

Colonel Utah Blaine, held captive by the Army of the Revolution, broke out of jail and headed north from Mexico with nothing but the clothes on his back. Then he found new trouble struggling at the end of a noose - and stepped in just in time to save the life of a Texas rancher. The would-be executioners were the rancher’s own men, looking to steal his land.

Donovan was supposed to be dead. The town of Dry Fork, southern Texas, had buried him years before when Uncle Joe Vickers had fired off both barrels of a shotgun into the vicious outlaw's face as he was escaping from jail. Now Uncle Joe has been shot - in just the same way. And Judge Upshaw had found a noose hanging on his door.

Louis L'Amour was the most decorated author in the history of American letters and a recipient of the Medal of Freedom. Now collected here in a single book are several of Louis L'Amour's finest Western stories the way Mr. L'Amour wrote them. At the time Louis L'Amour was writing, it was common practice for editors to rewrite the manuscript to fit certain publishing criteria. The text of The Strong Land has been restored, and the stories within it appear as Mr. L'Amour intended.

Where the real frontier begins...A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt.... A gunfighter, tired of violence, finds himself pushed down a trail of bloody revenge.... From purple sage to gambler's gold, from a senorita's tempting smile to a splash of blood in the dust, here are stories with a distinctive L'Amour twist.

A quiet farmer defends his honor in a moment of panic and luck...only to find true courage on the run from the dead man's brothers.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts - mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war - and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains west with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Six guns, whips, and wild, wild women! 1876: Time to throw away the corsets and draw down on the Old West. When Horace Greeley said "Go West Young Man" he never would have thought that two young women would take his advice to heart. Striking out against all odds and risking everything to be together. Society calls them Sapphists. Chief Sitting Bull calls them "Big Magic". Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok call them friends. Pinkerton's detectives want them alive.

Busted out of prison by an outlaw friend, Flintlock joins a hunt for a fortune - a golden bell hanging in a remote monastery. But between the smouldering ruin of his former jail cell and a treasure in the Arizona mountains there will be blood at a U.S. Army fort, a horrifying brush with Apache warriors, and a dozen bloody showdowns with the schemers, shootists, madmen, and lost women who find their way to Flintlock's side.

Unlike his brothers, Jacob, Sam, and Patrick, Shawn O'Brien isn't content to settle down on the family ranch in New Mexico territory. With his razor-sharp eye, lightning-fast draw, and burning thirst for justice, Shawn is carving out a reputation of his own. As a town tamer, he takes the most dangerous, lawless towns in the West and makes them safe for decent men, women, and children.

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.

Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.

Crooked Sheriff Harry Gauge rules the town of Trinidad, New Mexico, with an iron fist. His latest scheme is to force rancher George Cullen into selling his spread and to take Cullen's beautiful daughter Willa for his bride - whether she's willing or not.

Once a respected lawman in Kansas and Oklahoma, Ty Brannigan ended his career as town marshal of Warknife while he was still young enough to marry, start a family, and raise cattle. Now nearly sixty, he’s a proud husband, father of four, and proprietor of the Powderhorn Ranch. He’s more content wrangling cows than criminals. But for every outlaw Brannigan put in jail, noosed, or left to the vultures, he made even more enemies. They’ve made the mistake of targeting his wife and children—only to discover that Ty Brannigan enforces his own law with a lightning-fast draw.