Western Law

Lars Bonner rode into the little town of Rocky Canyon with the bodies of two outlaws tied across their horses. He is also returning the money the two had robbed from the town's bank. The town doesn't have a sheriff. It seems the last one to hold that positon left town without so much as a goodbye. At first it seems he will have nowhere to deliver the corpses in order to collect his bounty. However, the mayor who is also the banker agrees to sign the required affidavits.

Here are 16 stories, where good meets bad, and everything in between, from the legendary author of the West, Elmer Kelton. Law of the Land chronicles some of his most exciting and dangerous tales of the Old West, collected together for the first time - including the exciting first publication of a never-before published Kelton story, “Biscuits for Bandit”.

Heather Lindsay loves falling in love - even though her blueprint for romance has failed her time and time (and time) again. But now that she’s signed on to design an outdoor-wedding venue for her friend’s home renovation show, Heather’s found a new focus: her career. Only it’s not long before she’s being distracted - by the hunkiest man who ever swaggered down the streets of Red Oak Falls. The show’s new ranch manager, Waylon Peterson, a.k.a. Prince Harry in a cowboy hat, has every woman swooning. He’s also got a bad-boy rep that’s made him the hottest mess in town.

Nebraska, 1876. The western frontier is wild and needs a lawman who can tame it. Joe Mundy is such a man. A veteran of the Civil War and Indian wars, he once wore a badge in the booming cattle town of Baxter Springs, Kansas. A deadly gunfight with a prominent rancher costs him that badge. He finds his next job enforcing the law in Taylorsville, a new town in the sandhills of Nebraska.

A towering legend among chroniclers of the Old West, Ralph Compton penned searing tales of the highest entertainment. In this fast-paced actioner, Detective Sergeant John McBride gets while the gettin's good when a New York gangster puts a price on his head. But after landing in High Hopes, Colorado, McBride quickly finds that his troubles with the criminal sect are just beginning.

It was just another night in the small boomtown of Bradshaw. A prospector by the same name discovered gold in a nearby mine, and the small town sprouted in the middle of nowhere. Like wild mushrooms popping up in the middle of a dead bark, the town grew rapidly and developed a rowdy reputation. It attracted all sorts, from desperate men trying to find their fortune, to rowdy, lawless types that tried to escape theirs. The town of Bradshaw drew them all in, with the promise of striking it rich or at least evading the law.

All Alpine's marshal, Boyd Cooper, wants is a nice retirement, not to get a posse together to track outlaws. However, when an altercation leads to the exchange of gunfire and the spilling of outlaw blood, he doesn't have much of a choice. The outlaws fear their reputation might be at stake, so they declare revenge on the tin stars of Alpine. They're mad enough to break their own no-kill rule, and Boyd Cooper knows things could end as bloody as they started.

Soon after the Civil War, 16-year old Edward Valentine rides out from the family farm to seek adventure in Texas. He is little prepared for the lawlessness and savagery that will transform him from reckless young outlaw to seasoned lawman to hired assassin. After escaping from a Texas chain gang, Valentine flees to the Wyoming Territory, only to find himself in the middle of a violent range war. Forced to decide between following the law or living outside it, Valentine manages to do both.

On the day Trevor Hodge graduates from college, his life is about to take a sudden turn, and it's not toward the big accounting job he'd lined up. Surprised by a visitor at his college commencement, Trevor learns that his father, who he never knew, has died in an accident. Trevor is drawn by a subconscious and relentless yearning to go to Oklahoma to the funeral. He ultimately decides to stay the summer with his father's family and travel the rodeo circuit, where his father was a local hero.

Against the wishes of his widowed mother, 17-year-old Josh Timmons leaves her and his sisters behind to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a cowboy. A remarkable roping talent earns him a job on a cattle drive from New Mexico to the Texas Panhandle under the leadership of famous cattle baron Charles Goodnight. The dark side of Josh's ambition is a hidden desire to one day avenge his father's murder, but the realities of the trail make all his desires much more difficult than he had ever imagined.

Colt Ballard is a professional team roper with the talent to go all the way, but the loss of his parents from a car accident during his childhood has him fighting an emotional obstacle that keeps him from reaching the pinnacle of success. After being pushed out by the PRCA, Colt realizes his dilemma and accepts the advice of his late father's friend to take a summer job helping out at a rodeo camp in New Mexico.

The choice was simple. Sam Lockwood and his fellow Confederate prisoners of war could spend the rest of their days in a Union prison camp, or they could go west to bring law and order back to the wilds of Arizona as "Galvanized Yankees". They chose to ride west, and sure enough, what they found when they got there was a land turned lawless. Apaches were on the warpath and a gang of marauding Mexican bandidos was cutting up rough.

Growing up in the Wild West is tough, but for a woman even tougher. Join Tess as she fights her way against Timothy McCraven and his hired guns to obtain her goal of becoming sheriff of the small town of Harperton.

Carmen knows her beau's mother doesn't like her. Although her parents immigrated to the United States from Spain, the woman accuses her of being Indian, Mexican, or some other heritage she considers undesirable. Her beau says it doesn't matter to him what his mother thinks, but Carmen can't help but wonder what will happen if the woman finds out her parents and grandparents were gypsies.

Cody Jenkins was mad. Killing mad! He had always been a peaceable man. He’d never killed a man, and the only fights he’d been in had been with his fists, and most of those, he hadn’t started. All he wanted to do was bust broncs and be left alone. He had never been good with a pistol, and he didn’t have time to try to get good with one. The fury within him was burning as hot as a blacksmith's forge.

Shad Marone is hunted across the desert by a posse and vengeful sheriff who falsely accuse him of murder and intend to kill him without a trial.

When the SOS came from his pardner, Holt Spainhower knew he had to hit leather for Main City, but he hated like hell to do it. Spainhower had used his fast gun to clean up plenty of other towns, and he was tired of all the killing. But there was something even more sinister about Main City. And when Spainhower met murder on the road to that frontier town, he began to realize just how violent a job lay before him.

Frontier Law follows the exploits of Texas Ranger Frank Sirocco when he rides into San Ysidro to investigate the murder of two colleagues. Up against a deadly band of killers, gunfighters and renegades, Sirocco will need all of his wits and guns to survive this one. Fortunately, help arrived from unexpected sources.

At first glance, Shane Preston and Jonah Jones were an odd pair - one a lean, quiet gunfighter; the other a feisty old-timer running to fat. But they shared a special bond and a common goal: to track down the man with the scarred faced who’d killed Shane’s wife. To do that, however, they needed money. So, they hired out their guns as trouble-busters and fought one deadly battle after another, always in the hope that their trail would eventually cross with that of Scarface.

Red-headed Rann Tate, when he settled in the grim desolation of the Gallows Mountains, wanted only a chance to work his little spread alone and in peace. But even on that lonely rawhide frontier a man cannot cut himself off entirely from human friendship - although there might be a heavy price attached, brought about by the same forces that gave these mountains their dreaded name.