When Lorrimer Weldon rode into San Trinidad, he found he immediately had two job offers: the outlaw Roger Cunningham wants Weldon to join his smuggling operation as a hired gun, and Dr. Henry Watts wants to hire Weldon's gun as well, but as muscle to protect a patient dying of consumption, the beautiful Helen O'Mallock. Weldon finds Watts' proposition far more attractive, so he accepts the offer, knowing that Cunningham will resent the decision.

I'd almost been middleweight champion of the world. But then some doctors told me my heart was no good -from now on everything must be slow and easy; no emotion. Keep your heart locked up. Smile at everything. Play poker all your life. That was just how I happened to go wrong. I found out that if I worked out slowly, I could still ride a horse, even climb a mountain. All I had to watch were my nerves. Every time I got a nerve shock, my heart went smash.

The Untamed is a pioneering Wild West novel. Whistlin' Dan Barry is the hero, with his black stallion Satan and wolf dog Black Bart. The villain and leader of the gang of thugs, Jim Silent, is a thief, a killer, and a liar. He kidnaps Whistlin’ Dan’s adopted father and the woman he loves, and then war ensues, with a riveting end to the thugs.

Lew's skill with firearms gets him a job as a hunter with a trader heading onto the prairies to barter with the Indians. There he meets young Chuck Morris, and together they take on a Cheyenne attack party. Finding shelter in a Sioux village, they absorb the native culture. Lew comes to know the great Sioux chieftains, becoming blood brothers with Sitting Wolf, while Chuck marries the beautiful maiden Zintcallasappa.

Frederick Schiller Faust was a prolific writer who wrote under a number of pseudonyms. One of these was Max Brand. Gunman's Reckoning is the story of a drifter who is given the job of righting a great wrong. In the midst of carrying out his task, he finds out that he was not told the entire truth. He continues anyway, because in doing the job, he has stumbled on the answer to a long quest of his own. This book is a western romance that has a bit of everything: love, mystery, lies, action and humor.

The attacks of the huge lobo Gray Cloud have caused the remarkable price of $2,500 to be put on his head. And it falls to big Dave Reagan, considered little better than a half-wit in that part of the range, to discover the monster held fast in two of his traps. Something in the fearless animal's eyes keeps young Dave from killing the wolf. Instead Dave releases Gray Cloud, who is unable to walk, and rescues him from a prairie fire that threatens them both. Dave brings Gray Cloud home and chains him in a shed that he uses as a blacksmith shop.

He was still a young man, but he'd used that handful of years effectively, building a bad reputation that spanned the West, his villainy taking different forms everywhere it took roost. Denver knew him as the Doctor; Texans called him Montana; and folks in Idaho called him Texas. On account of his youth, most everywhere else called him the Lonesome Kid.

Harry Destry was a rough-and-tumble fighter who never lost a battle. But after six years in jail for a robbery he didn't commit, he comes back a changed man. The townsfolk believe he's beaten. They think all the fight's gone right out of him. And that's exactly what Destry wants them to think....

After the final battle of the Civil War, Confederate Sergeant Travis Kane rode his Yankee horse away from Palmito Ranch to return to his ranch in Uvalde County. As he began the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile ride across West Texas, Travis was grateful for surviving the long, bloody war without being wounded. But now that the fighting was over, his biggest concern was for his young wife because he hadn’t received a letter from Lillian in almost two years.

Orphaned at fourteen, Hector “Heck” Martin heads west, determined to see the far country and make a man of himself. Along the way, he falls in love with bold and beautiful Hope Mullen. But Heck is too young and poor to marry, so he heads west again. During a three-year journey, Heck crosses thousands of miles, becomes a bareknuckle boxer, a mountain man, and an Indian fighter, and meets the likes of Kit Carson and Jim Bridger as he explores the gorgeous and deadly frontier.

As far as the eye can see is a vast, empty horizon. Evie Teale has finally accepted that her husband won’t be coming home. To make ends meet she runs a temporary stage station. But though she is diligent and careful, Evie must prepare for the day when the passengers no longer come and she must protect her children in an untamed country where’s it’s far easier to die than to live. Miles away, another solitary soul battles for survival. Conagher is a lean, dark-eyed drifter who is not about to let a gang of rustlers push him around.

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.

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?

Lin Sloan never wanted anything more than Wildfire, but the stallion almost killed him. Luckily, Lucy Bostil found the horse and the unconscious man who had roped him. But Sloan is not the only man interested in Wildfire, and he may resort to murder to get what he wants.

No one more vividly captures the rugged majesty and enduring spirit of the American West than Louis L'Amour. Collected for the very first time are seven unabridged frontier tales from a legendary master of the genre. Volume One celebrates this remarkable voice in American fiction with a captivating blend of some of his best-loved work.

Harry Destry was a rough-and-tumble fighter who never lost a battle. But after six years in jail for a robbery he didn't commit, he comes back a changed man. The townsfolk believe he's beaten. They think all the fight's gone right out of him. And that's exactly what Destry wants them to think....

The Lindsay family has come west hoping to help the father, John, recover from an illness. When they arrive, they are induced to purchase Spanish Peaks Ranch, an abandoned United States military post surrounded by mountains. It seems like a perfect place to settle into their new life as ranchers. As they soon find out, though, this deserted fort is equally suited for both protection and imprisonment.

He is the Virginian-the first fully realized cowboy hero in American literature, a near-mythic figure whose idealized image has profoundly influenced our national consciousness. This enduring work of fiction marks the birth of a legend that lives with us still.

In this romantic and raw adventure set in the untamed wilderness of Wyoming of 1886, an anonymous college graduate ventures out west where he encounters gun fights, lynching, cattle rustlers, high-stake poker games, Indian attacks, and a brave, honest and imposing cowboy known simply as the Virginian. Presented as the archetypal, ideal hero of the "western" genre (which was novelized for the very first time in this same book), the Virginian, a foreman at Shiloh Ranch, carries a strong sense of justice.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

From humble beginnings in rural Tennessee to his heroic death defending the Alamo, frontiersman, adventurer, and politician David Davy Crockett embodies the spirit and ideals of the national character. Even during his lifetime, tales of the sharpshooting, skilled woodsman were - to his delight - told, retold, and elaborated on. As a US congressman, the former Creek War militiaman steadfastly opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.

One ranch. Three sons. Only one will inherit...and on one condition. Tired of waiting for his sons to settle down, Arizona-territory rancher Angus McKettrick announces a competition: the first son to marry and produce a grandchild will inherit Triple M ranch. Now, three distinctly different, equally determined cowboys are searching high and low for brides.

Deadwood Gulch stars bounty hunter Cas Everett, lightning fast on the draw and deadly as a nest of rattlers. When Cas returns home and finds his ma, pa, and siblings planted in fresh graves, he vows to call down the thunder on all those responsible.

Mauled by a giant grizzly and left to die, 16 year-old Jose Olano's chances for life were remote. Then, like a guardian angel, came Robert "Gray Eagle" McAllister, one-time army scout and sometime outlaw. In his flight to escape a posse, he finds the brutalized body of Jose. Knowing his decision to help Jose may mean his own death, he stays and brings Jose back from the brink of death. Thus began one of the greatest companionships ever known to the Idaho frontier.

Chancy Gantry and Ollie Teal are honest cowpunchers, riding herd on 1,500 longhorns from Texas to Kansas. Their trail boss, Lucas Stout, is tough but fair. He’s never lost a hand on a drive and doesn’t aim to start now. So when a cowhand needs a sawbones badly, Stout sends Chancy and Ollie to escort the man to a town called Prosperity, of which neither of them has ever heard. At first glance, the town looks deserted - but the saloon is full. Chancy and Ollie are about to discover that some towns are a lot easier to ride into than to ride out of....

Justice is a drifter with no fear and no memory, trailed by a violent past. Nora is a beautiful widow bravely raising her young son on an isolated New Mexican ranch. When a ruthless cattle baron pushes longhorns into the valley, Justice vows to protect Nora and her boy. But how can he succeed against thirty hired guns… including the four outlaws who left him for dead?

Burning Daylight begins as many of London's finest works begin: with the depiction of a man blessed with physical prowess and keen perception who takes on the natural forces of the 19th century Yukon. Supreme gold miner, risk-all gambler, and unbeatable fighter, Burning Daylight is his name. Daylight moves from the Yukon to San Francisco, and plays "the bigger game of finance and wealth," until he is reminded of something he lost, something pure and good....

He was a loner, a drifter, a fast gun whose aura of dangerous virility turned pretty heads all across the West. But if his reputation as an outlaw didn’t warn decent women away, his Comanche blood did. He saved Jessica’s life out on the desolate plains, then made her a willing captive of his savage desire. But even when he had left her behind to rejoin his people, Jesse found she could not forget him.

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.