Action Fiction Western

This second book in William W. Johnstone's classic First Mountain Man series finds Preacher leading a wagon train of settlers into the Rockies - and through dangerous territory. Trapped on the Continental Divide by a blinding snowstorm, Preacher must fend off the gunfire of the wicked Pardee gang, and a band of marauding Utes.

Heading west to San Diego some honest pilgrims paid 10 men good money to keep their wagon train safe. Soon word comes to Tombstone, where Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves are wearing out their welcome gambling with Wyatt Earp. The wagon train’s guards turned against their charges and headed off to Mexico with six young pioneer girls captive. Everyone knows the tortures of the damned that await the girls in the hellholes south of the border. But only Matt and Sam will do something about it.

Luke Ransom was just 18 years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed 100 enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River - the longest in North America - all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and hostile attacks by the Blackfeet and Arikara. Luke Ransom was one of the brave men chosen for the job - and one of the few to survive....

He's the son of a cattle rancher. A restless young dreamer who, under normal circumstances, would follow in his father's footsteps. Normal, however, is not his style. Like his famous grandfather and namesake Perley Gates - a hell-raising mountain man with a heavenly name - young Perley wants adventure, excitement, and freedom. And like his grandfather before him, he will find his dream - in the untamed wilds of a lawless frontier. That dream though might just become a nightmare....

For the first time, an epic account of a boy born into a struggle for survival on the harsh and unforgiving American frontier, the story behind the legend of Smoke Jensen.... On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war.

The little town of No-Name, Colorado is jubilant when they strike gold there, until every no-account degenerate and desperado for hundreds of miles shows up on their doorstep. It's up to mountain Man Smoke Jensen and his over-the-hill companions to save the town's bacon, and do their best not to get killed in the process.

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.

The harsh, unforgiving frontier is no place for innocents. And when an old friend of the Preacher's asks him to guide a gaggle of wide-eyed Easterners through the Rockies, Preacher responds with a polite: "Hell no." But the pilgrims are pursued by a gang of outlaws...and then ambushed by angry Indians. With his friend caught up in the melee, Preacher has no choice but to try to rescue him...and anyone else who happens to be within reach.

When Ben Savage receives a telegram informing him that an old friend died - and left him his saloon - he’s not sure what to think. Western saloons are as wild as it gets, full of rowdy ranchers and cocky cowboys, high-stakes gamblers and low-life drifters, hard liquor and easy women. Then there’s the occasional outlaw gang. But when Savage travels to Buzzard’s Bluff, Texas, to check out his inheritance, he meets the saloon’s lovely manager, Rachel Baskin, and has a change of heart.

Outlaws had smashed his life, left his wife dying, and carried off his son. Now all Frank Morgan wants is to hang up his guns and settle down in peace. But all that changes when he rides into the middle of a Montana range war, where a valley has been ripped apart by hatred and fears...and where his legend proves to be as dangerous as his gun. The blood of innocent men, women, and children has been shed. On one side is a small army of ranchers; on the other a stubborn band of farming families.

From America's greatest storytellers comes a bold new chapter in the Will Tanner saga, an epic quest for justice at the crossroads of history - in a crossfire of bullets... US Deputy Marshal Will Tanner earned his badge the old-fashioned way. He shot the bad guys, saved the good guys, and won the fear and respect of everyone in between. That's how legends are born. But when he visits a friend at his ranch and ends up confronting a trigger-happy horse thief, Will earns the wrath of the deadliest, lowlife killers west of the Mississippi. This is how legends die....

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.

In 1812, 12-year-old Art is a boy filled with wanderlust and raw courage. He runs away from home to begin a journey from Ohio westward. Along the way, he’ll run up against badlands and bad men. He’ll lose his freedom, gain his freedom, fight in the bloody Battle of New Orleans and learn the first rule of the frontier: do whatever it takes to survive. With ruthless enemies after him - both white men and Indians - Art will head for a place as brutal as it is beautiful - the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.

From his Missouri farm, the boy traveled west. In his hand was a Navy Colt given to him by Jesse James. By his side was the old mountain man named Preacher, who would teach young Smoke Jensen everything he needed to fight like the devil and die like a man. And in his heart...was vengeance. His enemies destroyed everything he'd ever loved. But they made one mistake. They let Smoke Jensen live.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, lead a cattle drive from the small town of Lonesome Dove to the unsettled Montana territories. On their grueling journey, they are joined by Joshua Deets, a Black scout and former Ranger, Jake Spoon, a fugitive, and Newt Dobbs, a 17-year-old boy who may have family ties to Call. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh and weep, dream and remember.

Shaving his beard and posing as a farmer from Ohio, Preacher comes face-to-face with Shad Beaumont and insinuates himself into his organization — as Beaumont's own personal bodyguard. But before Preacher can take down the sadistic leader, innocents — and not-so-innocents — are drawn into Beaumont's intricate web and Preacher finds the stakes of the game have become alarmingly high.

Buckskin, Nevada, was once a boomtown, then died a peaceful death. But when a fresh vein of silver is struck, Frank Morgan lets himself get pinned with a tin badge at the worst possible time. It's not the petty swindlers, or the stray murderer or two that will give Morgan problems. Instead, Buckskin is heating up from a miners strike, industrial sabotage, a hostile state militia, and an outlaw gang that decides the time is ripe for an all-out assault on the town.

Once upon a time in the Old West, Buck Trammel was a Pinkerton agent with a promising future. But after a tragic incident in a case gone wrong, he struck out for the wide-open spaces of Wichita, Kansas. Working as a bouncer at the Gilded Lily Saloon, he hopes to stay out of trouble. But soon enough, his gun skills are put to the test. The Bower gang shows up, turning a friendly card game with a Wyoming cattle baron into a killer-takes-all shooting match. Buck saves the cattle baron's life, but at the cost of two Bower men. That's when Deputy Wyatt Earp arrives.

Exiled from the Smoky Mountains for gunning down a man in self-defense, Breck Wallace tries to make a new home in St. Louis, even tries his hand at romance, but some men are too wild to settle down. Breck is soon back on the trail, where a vicious gang of trappers, after his goods, picks up his scent and begins to dog his every step, until Breck's only choice is to bed down for the winter with a tribe of friendly Indians.

Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves were hard on a trail that led them deeper and deeper into Apache territory toward the Mexican border where a bunch of varmints, desperate men who hire out to most anybody to most anything, were operatin' two of the scummiest dodges in the west. Running guns to the Apache and white-slaving kidnapped children. Matt and Sam had hooked up with two companions along the way, a prideful mountain man who'd lost his granddaughter in an Indian raid and a miss searchin' for her brother, taken by the Apache a while back.