Dramatized Adaptation Western

In all the horrific corners of the Civil War, there was no hell worse than Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp. Less infamous but equally inhumane was a Yankee prison camp run by General Thomas Wainwright. In the war’s aftermath, a survivor of Wainwright’s cruelty summons Joe Buckhorn to New Orleans, and asks the gunslinger to kill the general — not simply for revenge, but to stop another atrocity.

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.

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.

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 a wealthy cattle baroness, Pamela Danvers, hires gunslinger Joe Buckhorn to track down her son, it sounds like easy money. But when he learns that the boy has run off with a girl — whose father is the leader of the cattle-rustling Riley gang — Buckhorn’s only hope is to infiltrate the gang.

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].

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.

In 30 years of prospecting, old Jim had never discovered Amber's Mirage - a shining cliff above a spring that ran heavy with gold. But his young sidekick took up the search to find the gold - a search that would cost him two years away from wild Ruby, the woman he loved.

Crater City, New Mexico, is a bustling mining town brimming with the stench of men hungry to get rich the old fashioned way - killing the competition. Dennis Conroy is the owner of the biggest saloon in town, and he needs a few good sharpshooters to help protect surveyors laying out a route for a spur rail lie before his rival Hugh Thornton beats him to it. Jo Buckhorn’s handy with a gun so he takes the job.

Ten years ago, the legendary mountain man Preacher taught a violent lesson to eastern bad man Ezra Pease when he ran the outlaw out of town. But Pease and his trail-scum are back - shooting up the Big Empty to nail Preacher’s hide to a tree. Preacher’s riding to teach Pease one final deadly lesson. But he may be too late - because Pease’s vicious dealings have fired up an all-out Indian War. Now, with hard-riding death on both sides, Preacher, along with his old friends Beartooth, Dupre and Nighthawk, are heading straight into lead-flying scalp-smashing hell!

An unplanned murder during a bank robbery has another sheriff on the trail of those on the lam.

The Sante Fe Trail stretches from the Mississippi River to New Mexico Territory through the West's most savage lands. That's why a wealthy trader hires the mountain man called Preacher to keep his trade goods safe. But then, a towering, seemingly supernatural grizzly bear attacks. Both outlaws and Comanches ambush the wagon train. And the travelers find themselves surrounded by predators of every shape and stripe. For Preacher, there is only one way to go - straight into the heart of danger, to blaze a killing trail of his own....

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.

The mountains are brimming with the lure of fortunes — from gold to a booming fur trade. A man at home in this once pristine wilderness, Preacher knows there’s no turning back civilization now. What he doesn’t know is that beyond the plans of some men is a deadly enemy with far more dangerous designs....

In the bustling streets of St. Louis, two cousins have a dream: to travel west with a wagon train of supplies and make a fortune in trade. Preacher needs a job and is heading west anyway. But he doesn't bargain on the beautiful woman who sneaks her way into the wagon train and the trouble she brings on board.

Across the border is another wanderer and another tribe. Preacher’s old enemy, Willie Deaver, plies a band of Indians with the deadliest combination possible: whisky, guns, and bullets — then directs them to try out their killing tools on the Assiniboine. The raid reaps a harvest of devastating death, bloodshed, and helpless captives. Deaver is all the more delighted when he learns Preacher is among the fallen.

Preacher is on the move, joining a trail drive led by freewheeling adventurer Wiley Courtland. Wiley has good horses to deliver to the American Fur Company at Fort Gifford. An Indian war party, led by the cunning and ruthless Red Knife, has other plans. Furiously fighting their way to safety, the horse traders make it to Fort Gifford, where the beautiful wife of the fort’s commander makes a raid of her own, with the help of Preacher’s newfound buddy Wiley.

In a hail of thunder and gunfire, Jeston Nash fled a new Orleans billiards hall with a land deed in one hand, a blazing pistol in the other. He'd won his gamble with Quick Quintan Cordell fair and square. But in seconds, violence flared, Cordell lay dead, and Sheriff Pat Garret's voice still rang in Nash's ears...somewhere, someday, they would meet again....Jeston Nash learned about robbery from his cousin, Jesse James. But it was the wild outlaw Billy the Kid who taught him that even a wanted man is just a man. Nash catches up with the kid in a dusty town of drunken bottle-shooters.

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.

Jeston Nash bears a striking resemblance to his cousin Jesse Woodson James of Clay County Missouri. After killing a Yankee soldier in self-defense, Jeston meets his cousins, Jesse and Frank, and joins them to fight in Quantrill's guerilla forces. Later, after the war, he rides with the James-Younger gang as they invent their special brand of bank and train robbery. All the while, Jeston seeks vengeance against Daniel Zanone of the Free Kansas Militia - the man responsible for the death of his child.