Western Adventure

Louis L'Amour was the most decorated author in the history of American letters and a recipient of the Medal of Freedom. Now collected here in a single book are several of Louis L'Amour's finest Western stories the way Mr. L'Amour wrote them. At the time Louis L'Amour was writing, it was common practice for editors to rewrite the manuscript to fit certain publishing criteria. The text of The Strong Land has been restored, and the stories within it appear as Mr. L'Amour intended.

When Duff MacCallister sees smoke rising from his neighbor's ranch, he knows something is very wrong. But he isn't prepared for what he finds: smoldering buildings, a rancher and his wife brutally slaughtered, and a 14-year-old survivor who could not save her parents. Now, Duff is going after the killers - and his only companion is the headstrong girl who refuses to be left behind. Duff and his new companion head into the towering Gore Range. Up ahead are two convicted murderers who were about to be hung in Cheyenne and the killers who broke them loose.

The Indians around Fort Laramie, Wyoming, are peaceful. Or so it has seemed - until killers ambush a detail of US soldiers and an officer's wife. One man, an ambitious cavalry officer, flees the carnage and lives to tell the story - his own story, an outright lie. When Duff MacCallister and a few brave men go after the attackers, they discover the officer's wife is very much alive and at the cold merciless hands of the sadistic warrior Yellow Hawk. To free the woman, Duff touches off a fierce battle.

Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter is the first in an exciting new series starring Smoke's long-lost brother. During the Civil War, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is ordered to smuggle gold out of the city - but he ends up robbed and shot. Taken in by a Georgia farmer, Luke slowly recovers. Though he plans to rejoin Smoke, a budding romance with the farmer's daughter delays his departure - until a tragic event changes everything.

After spending most of his young life driving cattle from Texas to Nevada, Will Tanner is ready to wash the trail dust from his throat. Maybe it was fate that brought him to the Morning Glory Saloon on the border of Indian Territory - or just plain bad luck - because right after his sits down three rough-looking characters walk into the bar with vengeance in their eyes, guns at their sides...and fingers on their triggers. The trio's target is the famous US Deputy Marshal Dove who arrested one of their kin - and who's sitting in the bar near Will Tanner.

The trouble with being the fastest gun alive was having to prove it to all the trigger-happy gunmen who scoured the West itching for a challenge. Some traveled even further — Count Frederick von Hausen sailed across the Atlantic from Germany to hunt the most dangerous game of all — Smoke Jensen. Gathering together a hunting party of the toughest, most ruthless hard cases in the West, von Hausen shadowed Smoke into Wyoming's high Rockies — the odds were worse than 50 to 1.

Smoke Jensen couldn't have cared less about a range war that had erupted in far-off Montana. But when his cousin Fae is stuck right in the middle of the hundred-gun showdown that's exploding in bullets and blood, he rides to intercede in the name of family. He's joined on his mission by the Moab Kid and legendary gunfighters Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.

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.

Outlaws had smashed his life, left his wife dying, and carried off his son. Now all Frank Morgan wants is to hang up his guns and settle down in peace. But all that changes when he rides into the middle of a Montana range war, where a valley has been ripped apart by hatred and fears...and where his legend proves to be as dangerous as his gun. The blood of innocent men, women, and children has been shed. On one side is a small army of ranchers; on the other a stubborn band of farming families.

He was raised by the mountain man called Preacher, and he was said to be the fastest gun alive. Until he hung up his gunbelts to raise a family. Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and a force of nature. But Lee Slater and his gang of low life desperadoes didn’t know that. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble for the retired gunslinger was Slater’s first mistake. Shooting Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally was his second.

A wagon train of pioneers is struggling Westward toward Oregon through the howling winter and a band of Arikara warriors are hot on their trail. Little do the Arikaras suspect that they're about to come face-to-face and gun-to-gun with a ferocious fight they never expected, courtesy of the wily mountain man called Preacher. As Preacher struggles to bring the settlers to safety, he learns the real reason they were attacked and begins to suspect that the secrets they've been keeping equal a worse kind of danger.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.

A Rocky Mountain winter has left Breck reeling from the carnage unleashed by bloodthirsty trapper Judd Carnahan - and readying a quest for vengeance as ruthless as their prey. It gets even deadlier when Carnahan lays siege to a trading post on the Yellowstone River. He's left the owner dead and kidnapped a pretty hostage who can turn a nice profit once he puts her to work.

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 decides 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.

In the Wyoming wild, Blackfoot warriors prepare for battle, their bloodlust stirred by a legendary prophet promising victory in a war that will forever rid the plains of the white man. To legendary mountain man Preacher, it isn't a promise - it's a threat. But being out-numbered in a savage frontier means justice will be as hard-earned and uncertain as...survival.

Smoke Jensen has come to Corpus Christi, Texas, to take delivery of 500 horses he purchased from and old friend. That's when a Mexican revolutionary, Colonel Butamante Keno, brazenly crashes the border, slaughters 22 innocent US citizens in cold blood, and steals a thousand head of cattle - along with 200 of Smoke's horses.

Exiled from the Smoky Mountains for gunning down a man in self-defense, Breck Wallace tries to make a new home in St. Louis, even tries his hand at romance, but some men are too wild to settle down. Breck is soon back on the trail, where a vicious gang of trappers, after his goods, picks up his scent and begins to dog his every step, until Breck's only choice is to bed down for the winter with a tribe of friendly Indians.

Leaving their Pennsylvania home to forge a new life in the untamed Oregon Territory of 1845, the Colter family is ambushed by a kill crazy gang of cutthroats on the Oregon Trail. Fifteen-year-old Tim Colter manages to escape and hide — only to return and find his parents butchered, his sisters Nancy and Margaret missing, and one last killer waiting for his return.

If anyone knows the road to purgatory, it's Red Ryan. As a stagecoach guard, he's faced holdups, ambushes, and all-out attacks from every kill-crazy outlaw, Indian, and prairie rat. But even he's a bit reluctant to take on his next job: riding shotgun with his driver Buttons Muldoon on a stage bound from Fort Concho, Texas, to Fort Bliss.

Breck Wallace was turning into a true mountain man on the American frontier. As a teenager in Tennessee, he killed in self-defense, then left behind a woman he loved. With a gun and trap lines, he is learning how to survive in the Rockies, braving the punishing elements, ruthless outlaws, and forging an uneasy peace with the Indians. But as dangerous as life is, nothing is worse than a powerful man with a murderous grudge. Breckenridge has left two such men in his past - and they both send cold-blooded killers for hire after him.