Western Action

His father was Sam Ysabel, a wild Irish Kentuckian who’d come to Texas in the early days and rode as scout to Jim Bowie. His mother was the daughter of Chief Longwalker and his French Creole squaw. That dangerous mixture of bloods produced a son who inherited the sighting eye of an eagle from the sure-shooting, rifle-toting Kentuckian stock. His full name was Loncey Dalton Ysabel. Most men knew him as…the Ysabel Kid.

When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than forty thousand acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse.

There were problems to be solved before that became true: where to sell the cattle which swarmed across the Texas ranges and how to get them to the market; also whether sufficient longhorns could be delivered at one time to make a long journey to a market profitable. Charles Goodnight thought he had the answers and aimed to prove it. Backed by Ole Devil Hardin’s already legendary floating outfit, he set off with 3,500 head of cattle for distant Fort Sumner. With Dusty Fog as his segundo, Goodnight meant to deliver his herd and so pave the way for Texas to grow from hide and horn.

The cities of the Eastern states were hungry for beef. The problem was how to get it to them. Colonel Charles Goodnight had a plan that might work—if he had all the luck he needed. Things seemed to be going well, especially with the Floating Outfit on his side—Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, and Dusty Fog, the small Texan who walked tall. But what Goodnight didn’t need was an enemy like John Chisum....

When Colin Farquharson refused to sell the horse called Mogollon to Beatrice, Vicomtesse de Brioude, her husband swore to make him change his mind. To help him enforce his will upon the Scot, the Vicomte had a bunch of hired killers and a dozen cavalrymen commanded by an ambitious lieutenant besotted by the voluptuous Vicomtesse. Against them, the Scot had ten Mexican mesteneros and three Texas cowhands not yet twenty years of age.

Three Western Short Stories from best-selling author Carl Dane, including: Delta of The Dying Souls, The Mountain of Slow Madness, and Fury on the Far Horizon.

Ex-range detective Jim Duran has had enough of progress and the increasingly tamed West. But when he signs on with the Peacemaker Society for the final mission of his career, he gets more than he bargained for - a fiery Crow Indian bent on avenging a murder, a bone-freezing journey over a desolate white desert of treacherous ice and snow, and an insane dictator who threatens to plunge the United States into another Civil War.

There are two sides to Captain Tom Skinner. One follows orders. One follows his gut. To keep the wild, untamed Arizona Territory safe, he’s going with his gut. Damnable news has reached Fort Verde. Outlaw Jessup Henry and his gang of thugs are raising hell north of Santa Fe, one homestead massacre after another. Now they’re on the run in Arizona Territory evading the law. Cavalryman Tom Skinner’s command: charge south with his patrol and wipe them out. But Skinner knows the land. Military decree be damned, he’s deserting the wayward route—against orders—for the right one

To start their new life together, Jamie Pratt and his young bride join a westward wagon train bound for the Rocky Mountains. They get as far as Helena when their unscrupulous wagon master deserts them, leaving them as good as dead in a godforsaken, blood-scorched land. The other settlers agree to set stakes where they are, but Jamie and his bride press on toward the Bitterroot Valley, deep into Sioux territory. They never come out the other side.

He is looking for a little bit of peace and trying to start a new life, but everywhere he goes, trouble seems to find him. This time, it comes in the form of a beautiful woman.

When Andrew Apperley visits his brother David in the East, he brings along an unexpected companion. Andrew's giant wolf dog, Comanche, is so wild that he has to be chained up for the safety of others. However, when the Apperley brothers come across a man drowning in the East River, Comanche breaks loose from his chains and swims to the man's rescue.

The Flores brothers thought they were very smart. Vicious, evil bandidos, they laughed at the law. They laughed, too, when they first saw Colin Farquharson, for they had never come across a kilted Scotsman before. “What is it, a man or woman?” one of them whooped. Seconds later Adàn Flores lay dead, and though he escaped immediate retribution, from then on the Flores gang had one idea in mind—the killing of Colin Farquharson.

The Blackie Blackman Gang, volume 2 picks up the story as Will Cannon and Duke Wills are leaving Estilline to hunt down the rest of the Blackman Gang. Will is determined to cut down the odds against him by killing as many of the Blackman Gang as he can find before his final confrontion with the leader of the gang, Blackie Blackman. This audiobook ends the Will Cannon saga. The other Will Cannon, Bounty Hunter, novels are set during the 15 years between the Civil War and the day Will finally runs Blackman to ground.

Taking a hard look at his position in life, Balum can't say he's pleased. Near flat-broke and aimless, he bites at the chance of a lifetime: a roundup of 1,000 wild Texas longhorns. It won't be easy. He might die in a stampede or get hooked by a horn, the cattle might die on the drive or fetch a collapsed price at market. And the biggest obstacle of all: rustlers. There existed two types of rustlers in the Old West; those who stole a few head in the dark of night, and those who appropriated an entire herd for everybody to see.

Sam Judge, the legendary town-tamer, had captained a few trains in his day, but he had no particular hankering to relive those wild times all over again. Those settlers still had hundreds of miles to go before they reached their destination, and the way ahead was filled with all kinds of danger. But fate had other ideas for Sam, and when they finally reached trail's end, he and his gun-fast young partner, Matt Dury, found themselves under sentence of death... and about to face a trial by fire!

Almost before he knew it, Sam once a celebrated town-tamer whom Ned Buntline himself had called "The Pistol Prince" found himself embarking on a vengeance hunt. A boy Sam hadn't seen for fifteen years was connected with the killers, so that made it personal. But first and foremost, Sam was a peace-keeper. Convinced that the law would hang 'em all, he wanted the outlaws to have their day in court. The only thing he never reckoned on was the fact that they might very well kill him before he could find and catch them.

The choice was simple. Professional fighting man Carter O'Brien could stick around Scot's Post, California, and risk taking a bullet in the back from a bully-boy with a score to settle... or he could ride up into the treacherous, winter-locked mountains on an impossible mission of mercy. They both came down to the same thing - almost certain death. But because O'Brien had never been one to pass up a challenge, he chose the mountains.

O'Brien was hunting bounty up in Utah when the deal blew up in his face. Now he was hurting bad and the doctor told him that he'd have to rest up for at least a couple of months before he could even think about strapping his Colt back on. Still, a feller's got to earn a living, and he was grateful when the doctor gave him a job which promised to be nice and quiet. Hardly any more than an easy little trip across the territory.

After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Mississippi-born Sam Lockwood was posted to far-away Arizona Territory, where he soon grew to love the hostile desert known as Apacheria. But the Civil War dragged him back to Mississippi, where he experienced all the horrors of a savage conflict, including the hell-on-earth that was the Union prison-camp known as the Rat Hole.

Tension was rising fast in the hell-bent-for-leather town of Little Cody, Wyoming. A young girl had been murdered, and the killer was locked up in the local jail, awaiting trial. But the rough-and-ready miners weren’t prepared to let justice take its course. The only law they craved was lynch law. And to make things worse, the killer’s family was trying every dirty trick they could think of to make sure the case never reached the courts.