Wagon trains heading west were forced to defend themselves against Indians, cope with injuries and illness, and struggle to find food. The group of easterners Rock Bannon was scouting for faced another problem. They were being deceived. When he warned them to remain on the Humboldt Trail, Sharon Crockett and the others refused to listen. Mort Harper, a stranger riding a beautiful black mare, had dazzled them with his charm and good looks. The southern route was the best way to go, Harper told them. But best for whom?

Tom Kedrick earned his stripes during the Civil War, fought Apaches, and even soldiered overseas. But in the high desert country of New Mexico, the battle-hardened Kedrick is entangled in a different kind of war, fueled by greed and deception. Hired by Alton Burwick to drive a pack of renegades and outlaws off the government land recently set aside for an Indian reservation, Kedrick begins to notice that things are not as they seem. As his suspicions grow, he realizes that he may be fighting on the wrong side of a land swindle.

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives - but one man held their futures hostage. Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford’s captives were the Travens’ sister and Dal’s tough-minded fiancée, Kate. Now Mac and Dal must take up arms once again and ride together against Ashford’s army.

Ninety years ago the Toomey brothers, along with 25 other men and 4,000 head of cattle, vanished en route to Arizona. When writer and historian Dan Sheridan is invited to the missing brothers’ ranch by its current owner, he jumps at the chance. The visit fits right in with his plan to solve the century-old mystery - but it turns out that his host isn’t a fan of books, writers, or people who don’t mind their own business.

Hopalong rode into cattle country just east of the California line looking for his old friend Red Connors. He found Red holed up in a mountain cave with a bullet in his side and a story to tell. The ranchers around Tascotal had been losing their stock, and when Red caught the rustlers in the act, they hunted him down, shot him, and left him for dead. Jack Bolt, a savage, ruthless killer, has brought in a tough band of hardcases to run his operation.

His father killed by the British and his home burned, young Tatton Chantry left Ireland to make his fortune and regain the land that was rightfully his. Schooled along the way in the use of arms, Chantry arrives in London a wiser and far more dangerous man. He invests in trading ventures, but on a voyage to the New World his party is attacked by Indians and he is marooned in the untamed wilderness of the Carolina coast. It is in this darkest time, when everything seems lost, that Chantry encounters a remarkable opportunity....

Rafe Caradec—gambler, wanderer, soldier of fortune—was as hard a man as the battlefields and waterfronts of Latin America could fashion, but he was as good as his word. As Charles Rodney lay dying in a dank ship’s fo’c’sle, Rafe swore to make sure that Rodney’s Wyoming ranch went to his daughter, Ann. In Painted Rock, Wyoming, Caradec found land for a man to love, miles of rolling grasslands and towering mountains.

He had led the posse for miles through the desert, but now Matt Keelock was growing desperate. He was worried about Kristina. His trip to the town of Freedom for supplies had ended in a shootout. If caught he would hang. Even though Kris could handle a horse and rifle as well as most men, the possibility of Oskar Neerland's finding her made Matt's blood run cold. He knew the violent and obsessive Neerland, publicly embarrassed when Matt had stepped in and stolen Kris away, would try to kill them both if given half a chance.

Barnabus Pike is no gunfighter and not much of a street fighter. Eddie Holt is a black boxer in a white man's world. They've both taken their share of hard knocks. Now they're looking to survive a brutal winter in a remote Montana line shack, collect their pay, and settle down for good. Then they cross paths with a hardworking Irish immigrant and his beautiful, spirited sister, who've been burned off their land. It's a fight Pike and Holt don't want, don't need, and don't dare turn their backs on - especially when one of the perpetrators might be one of Pike's old friends.

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men - men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess.

When beautiful Angelina Foley presents Tom Radigan with a Spanish grant and claims ownership of his land, he realizes he's up against a cunning and deadly opportunist. Foley wants him off Vache Creek immediately, and with 3,000 head of cattle, an outfit of hardcase gunfighters, and winter coming on, she is unwilling to take no for an answer.

Matt Bardoul was a good man to have as a friend and a bad one to make trouble with. He was also a single-minded drifter—until he met his match in an outspoken beauty named Jacquine Coyle. She was headed into the Bighorn Mountains with her father and an expedition in search of gold. After Matt signs on to join them, he discovers that there is a group of outlaws in the party—gunfighters and thieves that Matt wouldn’t trust for a minute.

It was the only water for miles in a vast, sun-blasted desert where water meant survival. So Logan Cates naturally headed for Papago Wells. But he wasn't the only one. Fleeing the fierce Churupati and his Apache warriors, other travelers had come there, too. And when the Apaches found them, they began a siege as relentless and unforgiving as the barren land - and just as inescapable.

Rye Tyler was 12 when his father was killed in an Indian raid. Taken in by a mysterious stranger with a taste for books and an instinct for survival, Rye is schooled in the hard lessons of life in the West. But after killing a man, he is forced to leave his new home. He rides lonely mountain passes and works on dusty cattle drives until he finds a job breaking horses. Then he meets Liza Hetrick, and in her eyes he sees his future. After establishing himself as marshal of Alta, he returns, only to discover that Liza has been kidnapped.

Kate Lundy, owner of the Tumbling B, and Conn Dury, her foreman, told Tom the rules: men from the cattle drives are forbidden on the north side of town. People appreciated the money the cowboys spent but thought them too coarse to be near their homes. Enticed to come calling by Linda McDonald, daughter of one of the leading citizens, Tom Lundy broke the law and crossed the line. Later that night, he was dead. Outraged by her brother's murder, Kate vows to destroy the entire town.

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

When Gaylord Riley walked away from the Coburn gang, he had money and a dream. He worked hard and built a cabin, gathered a herd of cattle, and fell in love with Marie Shattuck. But when he is confronted with false accusations of rustling and murder, Riley is forced to defend his new law-abiding way of life. Outnumbered and facing a lynching party, Riley is surprised when his old friends return to lend him a hand. But how can they help him and keep themselves out of jail?

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.

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.

Bud Miles was a boy when he crossed the Mississippi. But Bud buried his father after an Indian attack, and as the wagon train pushed on through Sioux country, the boy stood as tall as any man....Tell Sackett killed cougars at 14 and fought a war at 15. Now Tell was hauling dangerous freight - a soldier's wife and a fortune in gold--knowing that someone wanted him dead....Laurie Bonnet was a mail-order bride who thought she was a failure on the frontier.

Rye Tyler was 12 when his father was killed in an Indian raid. Taken in by a mysterious stranger with a taste for books and an instinct for survival, Rye is schooled in the hard lessons of life in the West. But after killing a man, he is forced to leave his new home. He rides lonely mountain passes and works on dusty cattle drives until he finds a job breaking horses. Then he meets Liza Hetrick, and in her eyes he sees his future. After establishing himself as marshal of Alta, he returns, only to discover that Liza has been kidnapped.

Dan Killoe - over six feet of tough, raw, lightning-fast man. He had a trail heard and a mass of settlers to get across unknown territory to a new land. Then he gave shelter to a stranger being hunted by Felipe Soto, scar-faced leader of the renegade Comancheros. This time Killoe was borrowing more trouble than he wanted to handle.

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.

He had led the posse for miles through the desert, but now Matt Keelock was growing desperate. He was worried about Kristina. His trip to the town of Freedom for supplies had ended in a shootout. If caught he would hang. Even though Kris could handle a horse and rifle as well as most men, the possibility of Oskar Neerland's finding her made Matt's blood run cold. He knew the violent and obsessive Neerland, publicly embarrassed when Matt had stepped in and stolen Kris away, would try to kill them both if given half a chance.

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.

Adam Stark had found gold. In the confusion of the mesas and canyons near Rockinstraw Mountain, Stark, his wife, Consuelo, and his sister, Miriam, were quietly working a rich vein while keeping their presence a secret from raiding Apaches. Worried that his wife might leave him, Stark wanted to make enough money to take her to San Francisco, where she could enjoy the style of life she craved. But when Taggart, a stranger on the run from a vicious bounty hunter, enters their camp, tensions soon mount. Consuelo, against all good judgment, cannot resist testing Taggart.

Tap Duvarney lost his innocence in the War Between the States and then put his skills to the test as a soldier in the frontier army. Now, leaving behind a devoted fiancée, he is trying to make his fortune on the Texas coast, working a ranch as the partner of his old friend Tom Kittery - and finding himself in the middle of a feud between Kittery and the neighboring Munson family.

This collection of six exciting Western stories from early in Louis L’Amour’s career begins with “Fork Your Own Broncs”, in which Mac Marcy, who had saved for seven years to run his own small cattle ranch, sees his dream come true, only to have it threatened by Jingle Bob Kenyon. Also contains “Keep Travelin’, Rider”, “McQueen of the Tumbling K”, “Four Card Draw”, “Mistakes Can Kill You”, and “Showdown on the Tumbling T”.

Majestically it rose from the icy waters, the gateway to the awesome wilderness of Alaska. Sitka drew all brand of adventurers, con men, criminals, and pioneers—men such as trail-tough, battle-hardened Jean LaBarge. He left the swamps of the Susquehanna behind for the rugged beauty—and deadly challenges—of this frozen frontier. But the empire-hungry Russians had already established a foothold in Sitka and they wouldn’t give it up without a fierce and treacherous struggle that stretched from San Francisco to the palaces of St. Petersburg.

Bill Canavan rode into the valley with a dream to start his own ranch. But when he managed to stake claims on the three best water holes, the other ranchers turned against him. No one is more determined to see Canavan dead than Star Levitt. Levitt is an unscrupulous businessman who has been accumulating cattle at an alarming rate. Suspicious after witnessing a secret meeting between the riders of warring ranches, Bill begins noticing other dubious behavior: Why is Levitt's fiancée, Dixie Venable, acting more like a hostage than a willing bride-to-be?