Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

Ben Crawford was one of the best lawmen in the business, and when a man named Kane offered him a hundred bucks a month to keep the peace in the fresh, raw town he'd just founded, it sounded exactly like the challenge he'd been looking for. So he took the job...and spent the next 12 years just waiting for something to happen. It never did. In fact, life in Kane's Crossing, New Mexico, grew so damn quiet that the townsfolk eventually decided they didn't really need a lawman at all. But fate had other ideas, because all hell was destined to break loose....

It was the kind of sleepy little Texas town where nothing ever happened. Then eight masked men robbed the train from Sterling City and left a handful of bodies behind them, and pretty soon the marshal was up to his badge in problems. First of all there was the murder of one of Coffin Creek's most respected citizens to solve. Then there was the sudden, unwelcome appearance of a federal lawman who figured Marshal Baker was too old for his job.

Tim Dennison died a slow, agonizing death, but because he was a sheep man in a valley that was controlled by two powerful cattle barons, no one cared if his killers got away with murder.

Almost before he knew it, Sam once a celebrated town-tamer whom Ned Buntline himself had called "The Pistol Prince" found himself embarking on a vengeance hunt. A boy Sam hadn't seen for fifteen years was connected with the killers, so that made it personal. But first and foremost, Sam was a peace-keeper. Convinced that the law would hang 'em all, he wanted the outlaws to have their day in court. The only thing he never reckoned on was the fact that they might very well kill him before he could find and catch them.

It started with a slaughter and ended with a massacre, and by the finish of it, Sam Judge and Matt Dury had seen enough bloodshed to last them a lifetime. But the gun-fast men from Texas had signed on to help an army officer get his little girl back from the Apache renegades who’d kidnapped her, and once they gave their word, nothing would stop them from seeing a job through.

They said that Chase Donovan had been a Texas Ranger for too long, that he'd become a law unto himself and that they weren't prepared to put up with his maverick, gun-fast ways any longer. So they took away his badge and kicked him out of the battalion and, almost before he knew it, he'd turned into a full-time drunk.

Right across the West, lawmen were losing their fight against crime. Something had to be done fast. But what? It was a retired judge named Wilde who came up with the answer-to pit one outlaw against another. From that point on, his "law-enforcers" became six of the meanest misfits ever to see the inside of a jail-cell; a murderous albino, a black gunfighter, an Apache half-breed, a one-time Pinkerton detective, a Missouri-born conman and a giant whose hands were deadlier than a Gatling gun

Sam Judge, the legendary town-tamer, had captained a few trains in his day, but he had no particular hankering to relive those wild times all over again. Those settlers still had hundreds of miles to go before they reached their destination, and the way ahead was filled with all kinds of danger. But fate had other ideas for Sam, and when they finally reached trail's end, he and his gun-fast young partner, Matt Dury, found themselves under sentence of death... and about to face a trial by fire!

Lew Eden was 13 when he killed his first man. A lot more died at his hand before he finally had his fill of blood and bullets. Then he decided to enlist in the newly formed Seminole-Negro Scouts, hoping to do what he could to broker peace between white man and red.

After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Mississippi-born Sam Lockwood was posted to far-away Arizona Territory, where he soon grew to love the hostile desert known as Apacheria. But the Civil War dragged him back to Mississippi, where he experienced all the horrors of a savage conflict, including the hell-on-earth that was the Union prison-camp known as the Rat Hole.

A desperate telegram from young Lane Jenkins brought Flint McKay north to Montana, where Randolph Billington was using every dirty trick in the book to take over the territory. But what could Flint do about it? He was just an ageing drifter with failing eyesight. He had no home and no kin, just a horse, a saddle and a pistol he’d won in a bunkhouse poker game.

King Creek was a rough-and-ready mining town set right in the heart of the Nevada goldfields. There was no law to speak of except Stover's Law - and it was ruthlessly enforced by one greedy woman, her three callous sons, and a dozen hired gunmen. The situation was quickly going from bad to worse. A failed assassination attempt had left the only man capable of defying the freebooters crippled for life, and his wife was at her wits' end.

When you've got only five shots left, you have to make each one count. Like the outlaw whose quest for revenge didn't quite go according to plan. Or the cowboy who ended up using a most unusual weapon to defeat his Cheyenne enemy. Then there was the storekeeper who had to face his worst fear; the down-at-heel sheepherder who had to set past hatreds aside when a bunch of renegade Comanches went on the warpath; and the elderly couple who struggled to keep a secret that threatened to tear them apart.

Professor Andrew Murray and his fellow scientists were not to go up into the Texas hill country to carry out weather tests unless they had someone trail-wise along to watch them. So the government sent in its unofficial six-man team of trouble-busters, the Wilde Boys, to play nursemaid.For once it looked as if the west's most reluctant lawmen had been handed a nice, quiet little assignment. But then the bullets started flying ... and in next to no time they were fighting off bushwhackers and nightriders alike.

Arch Bowman raped and murdered his way across the West to become the stuff of legend. But when he survived a near-fatal shooting in Colfax, Colorado, he decided to make the most of his new lease of life and finally settle a long-standing piece of unfinished business... But that didn't mean Bowman was about to go soft. Before he was through, innocent men would die in legendary numbers, and Bowman would make sure that life was hell for a mild-mannered farmer named Walt Canaday.

For more than 10 years Jim Allison packed a marshal's badge in the violent Indian Nations. When he finally quit, it was to move to New Mexico and get into the cattle business. For a time life was hard but good. But then a vicious killer came along and shattered his peaceful existence.

Arizona Territory, 1882. The Apaches were riding rings around the army, raiding, robbing and killing pretty much wherever they liked. To beat them, Captain Nathan Kelso knew he had to fight them on their own terms, hitting fast and hitting hard. But who was going to listen to a washed-up, borderline drunk? As it turned out, he received support from a surprising quarter, and was ordered to form Company C, a light, mobile unit dedicated to bracing the Apaches wherever they found them.

Two cold-blooded killers and one stormy night of murder... together they resulted in a posse of three ill-matched man-hunters. But each of them had his own reasons for riding into Redbird Valley after the killers. For Marshal Cord, it wasn't only duty, it was personal. Charlie Pearson had something to prove - and not only to himself. As for Jack Sumlock... well, he tagged along because one of the killers was his own grandson. Up in the isolated high country, all three had to face their own demons.

Tension was rising fast in the hell-bent-for-leather town of Little Cody, Wyoming. A young girl had been murdered, and the killer was locked up in the local jail, awaiting trial. But the rough-and-ready miners weren’t prepared to let justice take its course. The only law they craved was lynch law. And to make things worse, the killer’s family was trying every dirty trick they could think of to make sure the case never reached the courts.

A case of mistaken identity marked O’Brien out for death the minute he rode into Nebraska. A feud had erupted between the local farmers and a scheming loan agent who figured to sell them out. Both sides pegged O’Brien as a vicious gunman named Wes Dexter, who had been hired to settle the matter with violence. That made him a hero to some.... and a target for others.