Dramatized Westerns

Cotton Pickens got where he is by virtue of a quick draw and slow wit. He knows the difference between lawbreakers you have to lock up...and the kind you might as well just let go. Deputy Rusty Irons, though, ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. Someone kidnapped Rusty's mail order brides. They were probably doing Irons a favor, but a deputy in love is blind.

Born and bred in the Texas Pandhandle town of Comanche Crossing, William "Wild Bill" Longley gunned down a dozen of its men in cold blood before he got around to the sheriff and deputy - so he could take over the job himself. Then he found the perfect sidekick in a vicious career criminal named Booker Tate.

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].

In Montana Territory, one name above all others strikes fear and hatred in the hearts of the Crow Indians - John Jackson, better known these days as Liver-Eating Jackson. Consumed by grief and rage, the mountain man has brutally killed 10 braves so far in his one-man war of vengeance against the Crow, who murdered his beloved wife. Smoke Jensen knows Jackson by another name - "friend". He's not sure to what extent Jackson's exploits are true - devastating loss and frontier savagery have certainly driven lesser men mad.

He was 15 when he killed his first man. Before his murderous ways ended, Hardin killed 42 men in cold blood - one, the legend goes, because he snored too loudly. From then on, John Wesley Hardin stayed true to his calling, killing man after man after man, spending most of his life being pursued by both local lawmen and federal troops.

With a handful of murderous rogues, Captain Jed Foster has run off with four wagons containing new Springfield rifles, bayonets, and ammunition meant to resupply the troops at Fort Bowie in Arizona Territory. Foster plans to sell the weapons to the highest bidder — whether it’s Apaches, Mexican revolutionaries, or Confederate veterans who still dream of destroying the Union. But that’s the least of Foster’s problems.

As a teenager, John McMasters won the Medal of Honor as a sniper for the Union Army during the Civil War. Thirty years later, McMasters lives a peaceful life in the Arizona Territory, raising a family and running cattle. These days, he needs eyeglasses to hit a distant target. But that doesn’t stop his wife and four children from buying him a special present for his 50th birthday: a beautiful new Remington shotgun. Turns out, he’s going to need it....

Fort Kearney, Nebraska is the gateway to the west for a new breed of pioneers. Civil War veterans and widows, card sharps and Indian agents, and drifters — they arrive every day hoping to forge their destiny. Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the US Calvary is assigned the unenviable task of securing a trio of forts in the dangerous Dakota Territory. At his command is a rising young officer Mark Reynolds and his spirited bride Rose, who longs for danger and excitement.

A beautiful woman, a powerful Mexican rancher, and an exotic new breed of cattle come to John Slaughter’s San Bernardino Valley ranch, along with the prospect of making a small fortune. While Slaughter’s men are out keeping the peace in Tombstone, an act of betrayal turns up the heat under his own roof, and a killer is stalking Slaughter’s wealthy Mexican guest. Indians suddenly savagely attack Slaughter’s ranch, but it is only the first shot in a bigger, blazing Arizona bloodbath.

How does a kid who can barely ride a horse, and who’s better with his fists and a team of mules than a six-shooter, think he can track and kill the most notorious killer on the Plains? Simple: Cuno Massey's thirst for revenge runs deep. Deeper than his skills. But when Rolf Anderson and Sammy Spoon killed the young man’s step-mother and his father, nothing would stand in young Cuno’s way.

In Massacre at Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American newcomers. Revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but his brother Joshua fears, since Joshua is in love with a Mexican girl. The story touches on the immortal battle of the Alamo but centers on the infamous Goliad massacre, and ultimately the decisive battle of San Jacinto, which made Texas an independent republic.

On the West Texas border, a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire, and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world — and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the town tamer.

One day, cold-blooded killers stole the life of Cuno Massey's young, expectant bride. Now, Cuno realizes his fate - and with his .45 in hand, he's going to make certain the killers realize theirs. Because if there's one thing Cuno has come to thirst for, it's the bittersweet taste of revenge.

In "Pecos Crossing", two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, have been cheated of six months’ hard-earned pay by their rancher boss, Larramore and intend to get what is due to them. In "Shotgun", Two Forks, Texas, rancher Blair Bishop must contend with a mean customer named Macy Modock, who Bishop sent to prison 10 years past. Modock is out of the hoosegow and has returned to Two Forks determined to get even with the man who sent him up the river.

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.

Honest presentation is only one characteristic of Frazee’s well-crafted tales. He tells a convincing, satisfying, and unusual story even when employing stock Western situations. A major strength is his understanding of the nuances of character, of how people are motivated, of the good and bad within each person, and of the conflicts between man and his environment. Drawing upon his years in the mountains of Colorado, he can vividly and realistically depict a variety of Western settings and do so in such a way that the settings assume a character of their own.

Kate Kerrigan has seen the blood-soaked face of war. But nothing has prepared her for the assault on her land that begins with an eviction order hammered onto the door of her family's cabin. Beautiful, cold-blooded Savannah Saint James has her sights set on the Kerrigan property - and 12 of the deadliest hired guns in Texas are ready to back her play. Kate has her sons by her side, a ragtag group of ranchers who don't like outsiders messing with their cattle, and a fighting spirit passed down from her Irish ancestors.

There’s nothing like a wedding to bring families together. And there’s no place like the Sugarloaf Ranch to throw a foot-stomping hoedown — even if it turns into a gun-blazing showdown. Smoke and Sally Jensen are delighted that their son Louis is marrying the lovely widow he met during a perilous stagecoach journey through the Donner Pass. The whole family welcomes the bride and her young son with open arms. In fact, everyone is invited to the party — even the handsome stranger who rescued Louis’s twin sister Denise from a runaway mustang.

He is brave, tough as leather, and has left behind a trail of deadly enemies - outlaws he's hunted down or killed with the cold heart of a man used to violence. A feared bounty hunter and the scourge of bad men everywhere, Flintlock carries an ancient Hawken muzzle-loader, handed down to him from the mountain man who raised him. He stands as the towering hero of a new Johnstone saga.

After a long hard journey up the Chisholm Trail, Kate Kerrigan is in Dodge City, facing a mystery of murder. A cowboy she hired, a man with a notorious past, has been accused of killing a prostitute and sentenced to hang. Kate still trusts Hank Lowry. And when a hired killer comes after her, she knows she has struck a nerve. Someone has framed Hank for murder - in order to cover up a more sinister and deadly crime spawned in the musty backrooms of the Kansas boomtown....