Showing results by author "Ralph Compton" in All Categories

Nathan Stone was a living legend in the West as a lawman, as an outlaw, as a gambler, as a wanderer through the wildest towns and terrain. He blazed a vengeance trail, giving no quarter and asking for none. Fearlessly, he played his cards and used his Colt .45s as best he could in games of chance, skill, and savagery, for stakes of life or death.

The legacy of legendary Western author Ralph Compton can be heard in the explosive tales penned by Joseph A. West. A ruthless murderer known as the Fat Man is terrorizing Green Meadow, Oklahoma, which sits over a massive store of black gold. The Fat Man will kill anyone who stands in his way. But gambler Chauncey Drake and Pinkerton agent Reuben Withers aren’t the kind to back down easy, and the stars are aligning for a showdown of epic proportions.

An 18-year-old cowpuncher finds himself inheriting $30,000 in gold from his boss, an old Dodge City cattle rancher paralyzed from a drive, with the edict that he must return the money back home to the boy's mother, who lives just over the Red River in Texas. The problem is - word about such an obscene amount of money tends to draw hardcases like honey draws flies.

Infamous shootist Buck Fletcher befriends a female victim of a range war and finds himself threatened by one side, courted by the other.

Doc Blaine must drive 3,000 head of cattle from Texas to Kansas, and needs his sons Jared and Miles to help. Unfortunately, his sons are in love with the same woman - and have vowed to kill each other on sight.

Armed with only a Colt rifle, a Bowie knife, and courage as big as the West, Ten Chisholm—the bold, illegitimate son of frontier scout and plains ambassador Jesse Chisholm and a Cherokee woman—arrives in the heart of Comanche country with a price on his head. His only crime: loving the beautiful daughter of a powerful New Orleans gambler who has promised her to a wealthy man she hates.

Thad Taylor is no one's idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he's disapproved of by most - especially his father. But when his father doesn't return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he's far from ready for the ordeal. Because his father is already dead. He has fallen victim to the bloody Benders - a demented family who lures travelers into their cabin way station only to rob and brutally murder them.

An extraordinary saga of the trail-blazing cowboys who made their fortune driving cattle from Texas to the Great Frontier. Across the Pecos, the Rio Colorado and La Panza mountains, the Texans and their longhorns kept charging-all the way to California gold!

His wife is gone to tuberculosis, his reputation was lost in the war, most of his life has already passed by, and now, even his horse has been taken by colic. All Carpenter has left are the men from his Army company. During the journey to California to reunite with them, he strikes up a friendship with Rafael Silva, an educated man making for the same town to start up a rifle factory. When they arrive, Carpenter's former brothers-in-arms actually try to run Silva out of town, despite the much-needed factory. There's trouble afoot....

On a cattle drive north, young gun Danielle Strange falls in love with one of the drovers. Now she must choose between letting him, the last of her father's murderers, go free - and sacrificing her own life to send the bushwhacker to Hell.

In the grand tradition of legendary author Ralph Compton comes this tense, thrill-a-minute Western. Deputy Marshal Logan Kane is in for one tough ride. He’s got six ruthless convicts caged in a prison wagon, and it’s his job alone to transport them safely across treacherous, unforgiving terrain. Holding off rustlers, outlaw gangs, lynch mobs, and the criminals’ free-riding cohorts will keep Kane—and his trusty Colt—plenty busy.

David Robbins continues the proud tradition of Ralph Compton's Western novels with enough hardscrabble heroes, blazing gun fights, and twisted villains to fill a corral. Bluff City is a booming silver mining town full of pigeons to pluck. When two of its wealthiest citizens devise plans to rob their neighbors legally and illegally, only Clay Adams stands in their way.

All Alpine's marshal, Boyd Cooper, wants is a nice retirement, not to get a posse together to track outlaws. However, when an altercation leads to the exchange of gunfire and the spilling of outlaw blood, he doesn't have much of a choice. The outlaws fear their reputation might be at stake, so they declare revenge on the tin stars of Alpine. They're mad enough to break their own no-kill rule, and Boyd Cooper knows things could end as bloody as they started.

Clint and Hamp are saddle partners to the end. So when Clint winds up behind bars for sending a double-dealing card cheat to his reward, Hamp will do anything to raise money to bribe the guards to set him free - even marry the daughter of the man who'll help him get the cash. Hamp comes to the aid of his hot-tempered friend, Clint, after he is jailed for killing a cheating gambler, bribing the guards to let him go, but no sooner is Clint free than he kills a local rancher with vengeful friends who will do anything to see Clint hanged.

Chip Chippendale met Ransom Barnes after the War Between the States, when the two cowboys drove a herd up from Texas together. But when Chip first laid eyes on Wyoming, he knew he was home, and the two friends split off on different trails. Each man went on to own his own ranch, but when Ransom's home is attacked and burned by a marauding band of Cheyenne warriors, he is faced with ruin - and makes matters worse by gunning down the Cheyenne leader's son.

Before hearing the call of the Lord, Paul had seen more than his share of sin - mostly his own. But since he came to minister to the small town of Pueblito Verde, most of what he sees are tamer transgressions. Knowing his own past, Paul believes the occasional mistake doesn' t make someone truly evil. But some men are more evil than others. When the brutal Jack Kerrigan and his band of ruffians hit town, Paul' s new life starts to go bad.

England Dan Rutledge and his partner John Cooley have worked their claim for a year and are barely eking out a living. When Cooley shows up with a map of the abandoned Irish Lord Mine he drunkenly bought off a shady cowboy, England Dan is sure it’s a complete fraud. After all, no one knows what happened to the most valuable gold mine in the Superstition Mountains after a banshee frightened off the last owner.

Dane Kramer looks forward to the day when his sprawling Oklahoma cattle ranch will truly be his - no strings attached. With only one more bank payment to make and a buyer in Omaha ready to pay top dollar for a herd of Herefords, he should finally have the banker, Earl Throckmorton, off his back. But Earl has a plan to keep the ranch for himself, and if he has his way, Dane's herd will never make it across the Omaha Trail - and Dane won't make it home alive.

Fresh from a successful trail drive, cattle hand Seth Coe is feeling flush, especially after a lucky streak at the poker table. But his good fortune earns him a dangerous enemy, notorious tinhorn gambler Hannibal Fisher, who is none too happy about being cleaned out. The innocent Coe starts the long ride back to Texas with big plans to buy his own ranch. All he needs now, he figures, is a wife. To his amazement, in tiny Prairie Fire, Kansas he meets the perfect woman, his childhood love Josette Dubois.

Four men - Jess Donner, a Rebel and Southern gentleman; Steve Ellsworth, a ladies' man with a foul temper; Stu Wilkens, a Yankee; and Heck Myers, a teller of tall tales - find their friendship sorely tested by a dance-hall girl and a gang of outlaws.