Short Westerns

Tonight the bullets will fly and rancher or rustler will die. A mystery man will decide whose blood will stain the sick streets of Star.

A demon coyote that's too fast to shoot and too smart to poison is closing in. Will the Wolf Hunter survive?

When a mysterious man on a white horse robs a series of stagecoaches on their way from the little town of Appleton to the Concord railroad station, everyone in town suspects a young and enigmatic man named Slim Malone. The newly elected mayor decides to bring in outside help, a deadly gunfighter named Lefty Cornwall.

This is a tale of a gentle gunfighter “Slope" Dugan, his pal the roughneck Blondy, and the fugitive boy Red. Slope had walked halfway across the country to sell what he thought was worthless mining stock back to Bonanza Chris, but when Bonanza offered to pay $1,500, they smelled a rat. They concocted a plan to explore the Christabel mine for themselves. If the rumors were true, they would end up millionaires. But they might also wind up dead!

Sometimes a lost gold mine offers up more than just gold. And sometimes a secret should remain a secret. A generational science fiction story from USA Today best-selling writer Dean Wesley Smith. A version of this story by Dean Wesley Smith first appeared in The Secret Prophecies of Nostradamus edited by Cynthia Sternau and Martin H. Greenberg.

In a desert with no trees, it's hard to find a good spot for a hanging. Even harder to find your way home. The story of Canyon in the Clouds twists and turns like a desert rattlesnake and is just as deadly. In this thrilling western tale a moribund sheriff, Clay, discovers the damage done not just to the condemned, but to the man holding the noose.

Greeley, Texas - a frontier town with a bad attitude and a reputation to match. Who lived in such a wicked place? Several compelling answers spring to life in this short story collection spanning more than a century of life, love, and lust in the West Texas dust. The time line stretches from the Civil War to the aftermath of Vietnam. Sin, it seems, never goes out of style...

The lure of the American West is in the spirit of adventure, in the majestic expanse of unconquered wilderness and in rugged individuals on a quest for identity and sometimes for survival. Owen Wister's unsmiling Virginian... Dorothy M. Johnson's, "A Man Called Horse": These are a few of the colorful, even legendary characters who populate The American West in Fiction, a collection of stories edited by Jon Tuska.

Short in size, Two Bit Higgins beats up the much bigger Dandy Barker in a bar fight in an southern Arizona gold-mining town. He is then named a deputy sheriff, also showing how dangerous he is with a gun. Then Barker comes back for revenge. How long will it be before Barker and his gang come looking for Two Bit and the show down?

Beautiful young brunette Grace Purdue heads to the local barn dance with the intention of pursuing the town's most eligible bachelor. What she finds when she gets there, however, is that as eligible as the oil tycoon might be, he is also crass, inconsiderate, and bigoted...none of the things she - nor any other woman with a brain in her head - should be looking for in a future husband. Fortunately for Grace, the night is not a complete waste of time when she runs in to the blue jean, cowboy hat wearing Arthur Monroe.

Wildorado is a collection of prose, poetry, and short stories influenced by the rugged individuals who pioneered the West, and still do to this day. From 1885 to today, Wildorado connects the past with the present in a unique and thought provoking way.

This is a collection of tales of the California Gold Rush era by the Western author, Bret Harte. It's a mix of local color, drama, and humor. Several film versions of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" have been made, and John Payne and Ronald Reagan starred in an adaptation of "Tennessee's Partner" in 1955. The spaghetti Western Four of the Apocalypse is based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".

Nobody welcomed Will Evans when he retired from bounty hunting to start a farm until a vicious cattle baron decided to run off all the farmers.

Barren Landscape is just one town, but it defines an entire region. Follow an eclectic mix of characters as they navigate the towns and deserts of New Mexico en route to a mysterious game, whose prize strikes the imagination of the hard men and women of the land. A series of non-sequential, linked stories that tell the tales and fate of hired guns, quick draw artists, cutthroat businessmen, and simple townspeople.

Entrusted with the delivery of one hundred pounds of gold to his partners, Johnny Potter faces four days of hard riding alone in a land of robbers and treacherous terrain.

To Old Pete's owner, it had always seemed that Pete would be the first to go. At 30 years of age, it even appeared likely. Now Old Pete's owner is confined to a hospital bed, though, and Old Pete is still going strong. But there might be some way that they could get together again for a last ride, prospecting up a mountain, just the two of them, who would have been together for a longer time than most married folks.

One of the most popular settings for romance stories was the Old West, where men were men and women were women. As many a swooning damsel could attest, "There's something about a cowboy." The Western romance became one of the most popular types of magazines sold during the early and mid-20th century. By today's standards, these stories may be considered sweet and wholesome, but there's still a thrill to them, the excitement of action and love waiting along the next trail.

Nedra despised rancher Bill McVeigh so furiously and unalterably - that she decided to be that arrogant cattle king's very last romance. When she gave rancher Bill a double dose of love-'em-and-leave-'em - she never figured she'd get stuck on the lovin'!

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) is a world-renowned novelist and short story writer noted primarily for his stories of the Western frontier. L'Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota and led an active, world-roaming life as, among other things, a seaman, longshoreman, rancher, miner, lumberjack and boxer before focusing on writing after World War II.

This is the story the led to the classic John Ford and John Wayne 1939 movie of the same name. Listen as a small group of travelers ride their way to their destination, trying to avoid the dangers of the trail, including the famous Geronimo!