An O'Brien Western

Rancher Clint McNally was looking for someone to deliver $20,000 to the men who’d kidnapped his young son. Whoever took the job had to be as hard as nails, so professional fighting man Carter O’Brien was the natural choice. Still, McNally knew better than to trust that kind of money to one man, so he gave O’Brien a partner - a one-eyed, cigar-chewing soldier of fortune called Logan Tyree.

Freelance fighting man Carter O’Brien had 5,000 reasons to go after the notorious Timberlake brothers. Each was a dollar bill. But there was more to it that just the reward money. Isaac Parker, the "Hanging Judge" himself, had asked O’Brien to track down the murderous outlaws. If he didn’t get them before they got the judge, Parker would wind up handing from his own gallows.

They were all elements in a bizarre mystery the likes of which professional adventurer Carter O’Brien had never encountered before. Up until a hidden sniper damn near killed him, all he’d wanted was to ride on to his next job in nearby Jackson’s Peak, but it looked like somebody else had other ideas. Suddenly he was up to his neck in something deadly. Why had people started dying all around him? Who was the bushwhacker and his sinister Oriental sidekick? And why had they picked on him?

Coyote was a renegade Apache who’d been spilling blood along the border for months. But now, he’d had enough of killing and was ready to disappear up into the mountains - provided the army agreed to deliver his wife safely to him inside two weeks. If anything happened to that squaw before she was reunited with her man, all hell would break loose; Coyote personally guaranteed it.

The Texas Rangers sent Carter O'Brien south of the border with orders to kill a madman. It was said that his target - a murderous bandit named Salazar - had the face of an angel and the heart of a demon. Certainly, judging by all he'd heard, O'Brien sure figured he needed killing. Given the choice, though, he'd sooner have faced Salazar in a head-on gunfight than turn back shooter and kill him from hiding.

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.

O'Brien was hunting bounty up in Utah when the deal blew up in his face. Now he was hurting bad and the doctor told him that he'd have to rest up for at least a couple of months before he could even think about strapping his Colt back on. Still, a feller's got to earn a living, and he was grateful when the doctor gave him a job which promised to be nice and quiet. Hardly any more than an easy little trip across the territory.

The choice was simple. Professional fighting man Carter O'Brien could stick around Scot's Post, California, and risk taking a bullet in the back from a bully-boy with a score to settle... or he could ride up into the treacherous, winter-locked mountains on an impossible mission of mercy. They both came down to the same thing - almost certain death. But because O'Brien had never been one to pass up a challenge, he chose the mountains.

Carter O'Brien was greased lightning with a gun and the best freelance fighting man in the business. That's why the greenhorn wanted to hire him. The only trouble was, he'd been sworn to secrecy about his own mysterious mission.

It stood to be the biggest oil well in the territory...provided wildcatter Bud Bishop could bring it in before his lease ran out. But the Irishman wanted to make sure he didn't. Then he figured to move in, take ownership, and keep all the spoils of Bishop's hard labor for himself. So Bishop's backers hired freelance fighting man Carter O'Brien to keep Hugh Quillan's bullyboys off his back long enough to get the job done. But the closer it came to the deadline, the harder Quillan started to play.