When the postal inspector in Carson City discovered a counterfeit one-dollar bill, he notified the Secret Service. That was why they’d been created just a decade earlier. Secret Service Agent Sean Brady was assigned to the case and prepared to make the day-long train ride from Ogden to start his investigation. Before he left, he was presented with a minor mystery by the Union Pacific freight manager that had nothing to do with counterfeiting.

Mattie Foster had made a terrible mistake. She had left Missouri and come to Green River, Wyoming to find her father; a father who was not the man that she even knew. Now, she was being held by two men against her will. The man who was determined to find her was a rancher. A rancher with a debt to repay.

When aging cowboy Gus Matthews gets fired from Rocking-C ranch for laying out the mean-spirited, know-nothing foreman, he heads north for Oklahoma, where he finds work with the Aronsons, an elderly couple whose ranch has seen better days. What should be easy work for kindly employers quickly turns sour when Gus discovers that the neighboring Slash-M ranch have been rustling the Aronsons’ cattle. Even worse, Gus becomes the corrupt sheriff’s main suspect in a string of violent crimes plaguing the county.

The loud roar snapped Mrs. Doyle from her sleep, and she quickly slid from her bedroll, stepped to the tents flap, and pulled it aside seeing a bear standing on its hind legs just a few feet from her. What made it more horrifying was what she didn't see. The camp behind the bear was empty. She dropped the flap and turned to her the frightened boy standing behind her. He looked at his equally terrified nanny unaware that they had been abandoned to die in the wilderness.

No one had seen the innocuous rock on the long climb to the pass on the Oregon Trail, and when the last covered wagon in the long line rolled onto the lump of granite, it shouldn’t have made much of a difference, but it caused almost instant tragedy. Just seconds later, the wagon plunged over the edge of the narrow trail, then began its deadly, tumbling roll into the abyss, spewing its contents as it fell to its destruction. Her precious children had been trapped inside, and Rebecca could only watch in horror. Her children had been her life, and now she had nothing.

After five long years in the army, First Lieutenant John Flynn was finally being mustered out and would soon be going home to the family he hadn’t even heard from in all that time. But when he rode to the family home, he made two shocking discoveries: his family was gone, and he had been declared dead by the army four years earlier. He left to cross the plains of Nebraska to find his family, but he would find so much more.

In his haste to escape a scalding death, the engine operator panicked and fell. Dylan lifted his heavy shovel as high as his 12-year-old arms could manage and swung at the thundering machine. It could've killed him, but he had to try. As the shovel’s steel head slammed into the machine, it set in motion a series of events that would shape his entire life.

Joey couldn’t imagine a better 13th birthday. He’d been given his first pistol and now was going to join his six older brothers on tomorrow’s job. They were going to trust him with covering their escape after robbing the bank and he was determined to do it right. He was immensely proud to be a Hogan, and his tough brothers were his heroes.

Luke Scott just needed to track down some rustlers.The biggest question he had as he rode form his ranch was what kind of idiot rustles cattle in Colorado in December? Three hours later, as he tried to find his way to safety in a howling blizzard, just staying alive was much more important. It was what he found when seeking emergency shelter that would alter his life forever.

Mack Smith had left his shop in Pueblo and was just an hour or so from reaching his brother’s ranch for his annual visit when he felt the bullet slam into his head, and when his eyes finally opened, he found himself flat on his back on the bottom of a ravine. What the hell had happened? He was only a gunsmith, not a gunfighter.

Eighteen-year-old Garrett Shaw and his father spotted the rustlers and pulled their Winchesters. They kept their muzzles pointed away from the three men who were stealing eight steers from their small ranch to give them a chance to leave peaceably. When they started throwing lead, Garrett and his father began returning fire. Garrett hit one of the rustlers just as his father’s horse went down. Hours later, as the doctor examined his father’s injury, Garrett knew that it was now his responsibility to provide for his crippled father, mother, and sisters.

Sixteen-year-old Henry was ejected from the enormous St. Martin ranch and told never to return, or he would be shot on sight. He vowed to return and seek revenge against the entire family. When he finally returned, it wouldn’t be as Henry St. Martin, it would not be as a 16-year-old boy seeking justice for his mother, but as a hardened lawman with the name of Alex Paine.

Private Jake Elliott was apprehensive as he walked to the commander’s office. He couldn’t think of a single transgression that would have attracted the major’s attention. When he left the command building 10 minutes later, he was still numbed by the short visit. Tomorrow, he would no longer be a cavalryman, but would be returning to the family ranch outside of Fort Benton in Montana Territory. But it was the reason he was being discharged before his enlistment expired that had been the biggest shock.

TJ knew the coal was there. A large deposit. But he had seen something else that intrigued him about the area south of Gillette in Wyoming Territory. He would find it only after he had bought the huge tract from the railroad. And he found much more. Not all of it good.

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.