Dramatized Adaptation Western

Restless cowpoke Perley Gates wanted nothing more than to track down the grandfather who abandoned his family years ago. What he found was the crazy old sidewinder barely hanging on after a Sioux massacre. The old man’s dying wish was to make things right for deserting his kin — by giving his strong-willed grandson Perley clues to the whereabouts of a buried fortune in gold.

During a trip back east for a family reunion, Preacher learns that even the civilized Midwest can attract a motherlode of trouble...especially when a gang of local bully boys decide to pick a fight. Now wealthy landowner Elam Parks lies dead - and there's a $5,000 reward on the head of the man accused: the first mountain man. The fortune in blood money has dispatched a small army of bounty hunters after Preacher. Now, back in his once-peaceful homestead in the High Lonesome, as he sights down the barrel of his '33 Hall North breechloader, Preacher is ready for target practice.

Werewolf by Max Brand in Western Story Magazine (12/18/26) involves just such an inward journey for Christopher Royal, who is convinced he is a coward and flees a confrontation with Harry Main, who is a gunfighter. There comes a time in this story - when Christopher encounters the aged Indian, the old wise man - that the terrain shimmers with the multiple affinities of meaning conjured by the unconscious, which Vergil once sought to capture within an image both awesome and sinister: numina magna deum [the great divine power of a god].

Long ago, the legendary trapper known as Preacher took shelter with the Absaroka, and fell in love with a girl called Bird in the Tree. Twenty years later, he rescues a woman and her son from an ambush by the hated Blackfoot. The woman is Birdie, and the valiant young warrior is Hawk That Soars — Preacher’s son. Now the greatest fighter on the frontier is about to go to war, to protect a family he never knew he had.

Like a murderous plague, a band of cutthroats and criminals, led by prison escapees from New Mexico, rages through West Texas. They're slaughtering everyone in their path: men, women, and children. They struck at Saragosa. Now they've taken over the town of Boracho. The Dallas newspapers call them the Kingdom Come Gang. In Chugwater, Wyoming, Duff McCallister calls them his enemy. Because one of their victims was family.

When Harry French left home he was just another kid looking to make his way. But when he comes back four years later, things are different. He's different. Or at least the town thinks so. Now nobody looks him in the eye. He isn't just Harry anymore, he's the Shifter, a gunfighter who brings trouble with him wherever he goes. And as hard as Harry tries, he finds that a reputation is a lot harder to put down than a gun.

For the greatest trapper in the country, there’s no place like the Rocky Mountains. Preacher and his son Hawk are riding the High Lonesome when the clear mountain air is split by a girl’s savage screams. A gang of ruthless trappers has kidnapped a Crow woman, but before they escape with her, Preacher and Hawk burst out of the tree line, guns spitting fire.

It's fur trapping season and Preacher is about to discover the Rocky Mountain trail holds more than wild game - it's also infested with murderers and trail trash quick to deceive, steal, and hunt Preacher down. Among them are Jebediah Druke, his ruthless band of killers, and most terrifying of all, the barbaric renegade Crow warrior known as Blood Eye. When Preacher shows up and gets on their bad side, he stirs up a clash that could lead to a brutal and bloody battle.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a savage grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

No one remembered when he’d come to the mountains - it seemed like Preacher had always been there. He’d seen a world of wonders in the unmapped mountains and forests of the vast North American frontier. In fact, he figured he wouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. But that was before Preacher traveled into the Ferris Range of Wyoming and discovered the city of Nova Roma....

When Big Max Huggins, the outlaw leader of a nearby cutthroat town, tries to impose his influence on Barlow, Smoke Jensen promptly sends the gang packing, but they retaliate by kidnapping his wife, and Smoke must save her as well as the town.

Preacher and Hawk ride out of the Rockies and into St. Louis, loaded with furs. It’s Hawk’s first trip to civilization and the moment he lays eyes on young Chessie Dayton, he’s lost in more ways than one. When Chessie unwisely signs on for a gold-hungry expedition into the lawless mountains, Hawk convinces Preacher to trail the outfit because they’re all headed straight to the sacred Indian grounds known as the Black Hills — a land of no return. To come out of it alive a lot of people will have to die.

On the rolling Missouri River, a riverboat of fur traders, a US Senator, and Prussian royalty are all heading to the Yellowstone from St. Louis. Preacher's onboard because the nation's fate depends on the passengers landing safe and sound. But it won't be easy. Two beautiful women make a play for Preacher. So does a killer. So does a band of river pirates. No sooner does Preacher beat back these threats than the riverboat lands in the middle of a blood-soaked Indian ambush - with a Prussian nobleman and his family taken hostage.

Agon Bordner is dead, and the ranch he cheated for has been handed over to Deed Corrigan and his brothers. But before they can get the Bar 3 back on its feet, Deed, Holt, and Blue must fight to rebuild the town by buying the bank and appointing a marshal. For a moment, peace looks possible for these three weary veterans of the trail — until the guns begin to fire.

Deed Corrigan earned his reputation as a gunfighter - the hard way. But now, after forging cattle trails and fighting off the Comanche, he’s setting his sights on a brighter future. With the help of his older brother Blue, a Civil War veteran who lost his arm in battle, Deed turns the Rafter C homestead into a successful, working cattle ranch. But when a land-grubbing banker tries to wipe out the competition - slaughtering ranchers, robbing farmers, and building an army of hired killers - Deed and Blue have no choice but to fight back with everything they’ve got.

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.

Here in America, life is full of surprises. Duff never expected to hear from his old friend Charles McGregor, his battalion commander from the Black Watch Regiment of Her Majesty’s army. Turns out McGregor lives in New Mexico now. And he needs Duff’s help. He’s started a new life as the mayor of Antelope Wells - a mining town that’s being targeted by a power-hungry madman Ebenezer Schofield, who wants to declare the whole area an independent principality - and himself as king.

Preacher, against his better judgment, agrees to lead a wagon train of women across the West. He hires a pack of mountain men to assist him, but he gets more than he bargained for when a gang of cutthroats follows the train with murder, rape and slave trafficking in mind. Led by the nefarious Easterner Victor Bedell, the outlaws will accomplish what few have done before: they will get a bullet into Preacher. But they’ll make a fatal mistake. They’ll leave him for dead. Soon the mountains will echo with avenging gunfire.

Scream of Eagles is the fourth book in William W. Johnstone’s epic saga of the MacCallister clan, a family caught up in the vivid sweep of American history. Jamie Ian MacCallister has survived the bloodshed of the Alamo and the Civil War. Now the battle has gotten personal: Jamie is on a one-man vendetta against the Miles Nelson gang, the men responsible for the brutal murder of his wife Kate. His journey of revenge will take him from Atlantic City to the deadly landscape of the Colorado Rockies - and finally to the Battle of Little Big Horn.

It was a favor to a dead friend: Frank Morgan is shepherding a group of mail-order brides to a brawling Alaska boom town called Skagway. A bushwhacking, a storm-racked sea voyage and an anything-but-friendly reception isn't enough to stop Morgan and his blushing brides. But a beautiful woman has a lucrative plot on her mind - in the wild, wild north where men are mad with greed and loneliness.