Showing results by author "J. A. Johnstone" in All Categories

Once every year, Perley Gates and his brothers lead the Triple-G crew on its annual cattle drive. It’s a treacherous journey along the Great Western Trail, with a herd of 2,000 cows on one side and many opportunities for trouble on the other. This year, trouble shows up in the form of a beautiful young woman, her little baby, and her bizarre traveling companion — a colorful old cuss who goes by the name of Possom Smith. They’re heading to a settlement called Butcher Bottom, and risking their necks to get there.

They just wanted to get home for Christmas...but fate had other plans. It's December 1890. A Texas rancher named Big Jim Conyers has a deal with Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Forth Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed.

Not many men get a second chance at life. But thanks to a chief U.S. Marshal who needs their help, the bank-robbing duo of Jimmy "Slash" Braddock and Melvin "Pecos Kid" Baker are on the right side of the law. As unofficial marshals, they've agreed to pick up three prisoners from a Milestown jail and escort them to Denver. Sounds easy enough—until they learn the prisoners are an unholy trio of sadistic cutthroat killers known as Talon, "Hellraisin'" Frank, and the Sioux called Black Pot. And they've managed to escape before Slash and Pecos even show up.

They ride after sundown. Black robed figures with skulls for faces, terrorizing the town of Recoil like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. If the sheriff hopes to defeat this hellish band of outlaws, he'll need back-up. Enter Colonel Shamus O'Brien. The seasoned ranch hand and patriarch has fought off more than his share of horse thieves and marauders. But he's never seen anything like these ornery devils.

It's hard country, but the pioneers of Fury (Population 112) are banding together to make it a home. With barren lands, blinding dust storms, drought, hostile Indians and violent bands of cutthroat outlaws against them, death is never far away. It's enough to make Jason Fury, whose father the town was named after, ride out for San Francisco. But a fiery young redhead named Megan McDonald keeps him Arizona bound - and just in time.

Lawmen don't last long in the town of Doubtful, Wyoming Territory. The last one quit, another ended up in a hangman's noose, and one more was backshot by the hired guns at the Circle L Ranch. But the town of Doubtful has never seen the likes of the man who's known only as Cotton, who aims to take the badge for $125 a month, save himself a nice chunk of money over the next year, and be on his way. At least, that's his plan.

It's one of the great mysteries of the Old West. The unexplained disappearance of a hunting party of Prussian nobles who entered the American wilderness - and never returned. Now, years later, the Prussian government demands an explanation. In response, the US Army hires Preacher and Jamie MacCallister to join their search party - along with a band of Prussian soldiers led by the sinister Baron Adalwolf von Kuhner. Some believe it's a hopeless mission, that the original party was slaughtered by the Blackfeet. Others think there may be survivors, likely women held captive as slaves.

Falcon MacCallister never thought he’d wear army brass. But Colorado is about to join the Union — and the would-be state has just made him Lt. Colonel in its Home Guard. Then, before his military career can take off, Falcon loses one of his men and two deadly new Gatling guns to a murderous ambush. Falcon is going to get those Gatling guns back — before they kill the wrong people.

When Smoke Jensen sees a gang of outlaws holding up a stagecoach, his gunfighter instincts take over and he storms in with guns blazing. He kills one of the gunmen, the rest scatter like the rats they are. Another notch on the sharpshooter's weathered grip. But the dead man is the brother of the notorious outlaw Gabe Briggs, and Briggs will want revenge....

Bounty-hunter turned "businessman" Rafe Kingston is the fastest gun in the west...and the last person you want to see on your doorstep. So you can imagine how the O'Brien brothers feel when this vicious vermin shows up at their ranch with a letter, signed by a US Senator, claiming he's the rightful owner of their land.

On the rolling Missouri River, a riverboat of fur traders, a US Senator, and Prussian royalty are all heading to the Yellowstone from St. Louis. Preacher's onboard because the nation's fate depends on the passengers landing safe and sound. But it won't be easy. Two beautiful women make a play for Preacher. So does a killer. So does a band of river pirates. No sooner does Preacher beat back these threats than the riverboat lands in the middle of a blood-soaked Indian ambush - with a Prussian nobleman and his family taken hostage.

Missouri, 1860. Rumors of war between the North and South are spreading across the land. In rural Green County, many of the farmers are already choosing sides. But not John Zachary. His loyalties lie with his family first - and his heart is telling him to go west. Hoping to build a new life in the fertile valleys of Oregon, he convinces his best friend, Emmitt Braxton, to pack up their families and join him on a wagon train across the Oregon Trail. The journey will be long and hard.

They came from the sea: a former ship captain named Owen Bird who inherited a Texas ranch from his brother.... A former pirate named “Black Terrance” Malone, who has arrived in the once peaceful Rattlesnake Valley with a crew of sea dogs to do his dirty work. And dirty work it would be, as Black Terrance begins a campaign of thieving and threatening, even targeting Bird’s beautiful young niece. Into this storm rides the Loner — Conrad Morgan, son of the legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan.

The first story in a fiery new series about the west's most dangerous boomtown, and the reformed outlaw who risks his life to keep it safe....In the dark shadow of the Prophecy Mountains lies the ramshackle town of Rattlesnake Wells, where dreamers come to make their fortunes, and desperados come to die. The streets of this little settlement are slick with mud and stained with blood, and it will fall to Bob Hatfield to sweep them clean. The town marshal, Hatfield, has a young man's face, but his eyes are those of a killer. He is a good man, but he has a secret that weighs on his soul.

Twelve years ago, newspaperman John Bryce saved an innocent man from the hangman's noose. That man was Matt Jensen. In gratitude, Matt gave Bryce four gold nuggets and told him, "If there's ever anything I can do, just let me know." Now, that day has come. As editor of the Fullerton Defender, Bryce has become the target of a powerful - and ruthless - English lord. A feared master duelist, his aim is fixed on the Dakota Territories.

It was a duty to a dead man. Matt Jensen had promised his friend, slain by an outlaw named Pogue Willis, that he would deliver money to his brother in St. Louis. But Matt's search leads him from St. Louis to Arizona Territory and into the company of a rich Easterner and his beautiful young wife. For Matt, the schemes of some citified land prospectors don't mean much, until the young woman is seized by renegade Apaches and it's up to Matt to save her life from brutal death....

After spending most of his young life driving cattle from Texas to Nevada, Will Tanner is ready to wash the trail dust from his throat. Maybe it was fate that brought him to the Morning Glory Saloon on the border of Indian Territory - or just plain bad luck - because right after his sits down three rough-looking characters walk into the bar with vengeance in their eyes, guns at their sides...and fingers on their triggers. The trio's target is the famous US Deputy Marshal Dove who arrested one of their kin - and who's sitting in the bar near Will Tanner.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present - a brand-new lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs - never makes it there. Instead the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

Unwilling to die behind the bars of the hellish prison where life is worth less than a peso, Long's band of desperadoes break out of jail and split up to escape. Now, Two-Horses, Luke Fischer, Gabriel Santana, Billy Lightning, and Long are scrabbling along a desolate landscape, heading for Texas to reclaim their ill-gotten gains, hunted by dogged lawmen, merciless Comaches, and a violent gang of bandits who also want the stolen gold.

Jonas Madigan is dying. He spent his life taming towns and upholding justice across the west with no regrets. Along the way, Madigan took the measure of good men like Smoke Jensen, who has traveled to Salt Lick, Texas to pay his respects to the lawman. But when bandits gun down the small town’s current marshal—and Smoke sends the killers to Boot Hill—Madigan asks his friend to wear the badge and keep the peace until a permanent replacement is sworn in. Turns out the bandits were members of Bishop’s Mauraders, a twenty-man gang of trigger-happy thieves led by the vicious Snake Bishop.