Short Westerns

One of the most successful pulp magazines ever envisioned was Ranch Romances. Combining Wild West settings with the eternal struggle to snag a mate, it ran from the 1920s clear to the '70s. Naturally, other publishers jumped on the wagon train. Popular Publications did so in 1935 with Rangeland Romances.

Dave Nash smells trouble the moment he rides into Signal. He's only been working for Walt Shipley three weeks, but he feels he owes the man his life for giving him a job when no one else would. Now, Nash will do anything for Shipley—even if it means staring down the barrel of a gun. He'll face any danger for his new boss, but he hasn't reckoned on the most dangerous creature of all: a conniving frontier woman.

When the postman sees the letter addressed to Dave Coyle, he knows trouble is coming to Yellow Jacket and guns will soon be blazing. Coyle's face is plastered all over town on Wanted posters offering $7,000, dead or alive, but there's not a man in the territory fast enough to take him on. As word spreads that Coyle is to return, every man in town grabs a gun. But that won't be nearly enough.

Lawbreaker Webb Cousins is headed for a short trial and a long stretch in jail. A bounty hunter has him cuffed and covered, with no chance of escape. But when the prisoner and his captor ride into the town of Wagon Mound, death rides with them. In a flash of rifle fire and a spray of blood, Cousins finds himself shackled to a dead man—and unwittingly caught up in a murderous range war he wants nothing to do with. To ride away a free man will take more than breaking his bonds. He'll have to wage a one-man battle against two bitter enemies locked in a vicious cycle of vengeance and cruelty.

Town of Twenty Triggers opens this new trio of short novels by Les Savage Jr., marking their first appearance in book form. He was known only as the Joker, a portly, chuckling man with a bland smile, a poker face, and an amazing ability to make a deck of cards perform any trick he desired. His traveling companion is Emmet Pierce, a Texan fast with his gun. When this duo arrives in the small ranching town of Benton, the Joker is ready to take it over and claim it for his own.

This Raging Bull Publishing box set contains 10 classic Western short stories by Robert Ervin Howard, including "A Gent from Bear Creek", "Apache Mountain War", "Cupid from Bear Creek", and many more.

The Luck of Roaring Camp is a collection of short stories from one of the most unusual of Western writers, in that he only spent 18 years of his life in America. First published in 1870, this new Raging Bull Edition contains the original text as well as background articles including: "Bret Harte - A Golden Age Poet" and "The American Gold Rush - California's 19th Century Success".

Collected here are 10 Western short stories by Richard S. Wheeler, the award-winning author who makes storytelling look easy. In "Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy", celebrated criminal Mugs Birdsong decides to found an academy that will instruct lawmen on the ways and means of lawlessness. "The Last Days of Dominic Prince" is the tragic tale of a cattle baron and his final conflict with the forces of political correctness. "Dead Weight" introduces us to a coffin maker who constructs a work of art.

Phil Evarts is dead, and the Hatchet Range is up for grabs. That's 70,000 acres of prime turf just waiting for the man rich enough to buy it . . . or the gunman crazy enough to kill for it. Every schemer in town has his eyes on Hatchet, and Bide Mariner leads the charge. An unscrupulous rancher who'll stop at nothing for cash, Mariner has the money and the guns to take whatever he wants. Only Will Ballard stands in his way—and that means Ballard is marked for death.

Imagine: a fantasy world, but not one based on medieval/Dark Ages European culture and myth, but rather on the tropes of the spaghetti Western and Chinese Wuxia. Add steampunk elements. Mix well.

Pediatrician Parker Reese likes to play the field and usually has women at his beck and call. Until caring for a newborn in crisis sets him on a collision course with beautiful but standoffish nurse Clare Connelly. He's willing to wager he can seduce her despite herself. But as they bond over healing the baby, the question becomes: Who's seducing whom? Soon all bets are off, but can Clare trust her heart to this player, or is it just a game?

The army wagon train carried rifles, ammunition, and a chestful of gold through Apache territory, where every white man was a target. With the soldiers rode a single stagecoach carrying the woman whom Chris Danning planned to marry. When the train passed through Karnes Canyon, an Apache raiding party stormed out of the shadows, and the creek ran red with blood. For 18 months now, Danning has searched for the Apache who attacked the wagon train and killed his fiancée. He’s also hunting the corrupt white man who sold the soldiers out.

After 10 years of hard fighting and harder living, Will Danning is coming home to Yellow Jacket. His arrival is anything but celebrated, however - the last time he cast a shadow here, he wasn’t exactly walking the straight and narrow. Danning has returned to buy the Pitchfork Ranch, where he used to work cattle that weren’t always legally his. For his neighbors, that’s cause for concern; Angus Case still remembers when his herds were ravaged. What’s more, Danning’s friends can’t understand why he’d want such a dried-up parcel of land.

Frank Christian and Morg Wheelon were going to build something great. After the two veteran cattle punchers saved up enough to start their own outfit, Frank was to ride down to Texas and buy whatever herd he could, then bring them up the Chisholm Trail through Indian country to the rich grasslands of the Cheyenne in Wyoming. Morg would be waiting with the grazing rights in hand. It was a risky plan, but Frank and Morg weren’t about to give up their dream.

If you love faith-filled tales of the West, overcoming stories of resilient love, and characters that embody the pioneering spirit, you will be swept away with The Widows of Wellness Creek Complete Box Set.

Welcome to the town of Greenburg! The Greenburg Bride Collection follows the Greenburg family, who settled and founded the western town of Greenburg in the 1800s. The family struggles to make it in this small town while the children grow and try to make their own lives. This three part collection follows Myrtle, Mariam, and Lillian as they try to find love and peace despite the interferences of their family, who has other plans for them...

Bret Harte was an American short-story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. We offer now some samples of his diversity in a collection of his short stories: “The Outcasts of Poker Flats”, “Tennessee’s Partner”, “The Idyl of Red Gulch”, “Brown of Calaveras”, “Muck-A-Muck”, “The Ninety-Nine Guardsmen”, “Mr. Midshipman Breezy”, “The Legend of Monte Del Diablo”, and more.

Giff Dixon doesn't remember how he got to the town of Corazon. All he knows is that some cowboys found him way off the beaten path in Oklahoma cattle country, barely alive, and carrying a belly full of buckshot. Now, he's broke, friendless, and at the end of his rope. Everything changes when, out of the blue, he's offered a job guiding a government expedition to investigate reports of homesteaders being forced off their land by the all-powerful Torreon Cattle Company. It seems an easy enough ride until Grady Sebree, the iron-fisted boss of Torreon, approaches Dixon.

When he learns of his parents' death in a train crash, Sam Dana makes his way home to the Bar D ranch—not to claim it, but to settle the estate and move on. He has no need for the hard life of a cattleman after finally striking it big as a prospector. But what Sam finds is far from the home he remembers. The ranch has become an armed camp led by his cantankerous half-brother, Walt, who's been hiring men more skilled with a six-gun than a lasso. In Sam's absence, things have gone downhill in all ways possible.

Tex Larimee is a grizzled Arizona sheriff who’s leaving the deserts of Cactus County behind, blazing a trail east to mix it up with The Slickers in the canyons of Manhattan. Tex’s welcome to New York is a rude one. Robbed of his cash, gun and badge, he’s locked in a room in back of a run-down bar. Breaking out of the bar, he goes looking for his best friend...only to find him dead, his throat cut. And the cops accuse Tex of committing the murder.