Showing results by author "Gary McCarthy" in All Categories

Along the harsh North California coast the otters swam, enough to fill the Russians' trading ships with valuable pelts. So there they raised an outpost. But inland lay another land, a river wilderness, where game and grizzly thrived. Into this wild land, stripped of his rank for marrying an Indian girl, Lieutenant Anton Rostov is cast. He is an man without a country, but still he is a man. He can hunt, trap, and conquer. And he discovers a power greater than his allegiance to a faraway Czar - the lure of a new world.

In the wake of disaster, the surviving members of the Ballou family sought a new beginning on the Texas Frontier. A minister and his family become their traveling companions. Tragedy strikes when the minister and his young daughter are attacked by rattlesnakes and severely bitten. Their lives depend on the only medical attention available, that of a Comanche medicine man. And it is up to Ruff to persuade the reluctant Comanches to give them aid.

Here is the bold adventure story of William Dunn, an educated man yet an accomplished mountain man. His life becomes forever entwined with the wild, unforgettable, Grand Canyon. He hires on as a guide for the John Wesley Powell historic expedition into the Grand Canyon, but then leaves the expedition to guide two men back to civilization.

Look sharp, hit hard - that's the Derby Man's style. He's a fast-moving mountain of muscle who throws himself into the thick of the West's greatest adventures - like the Pony Express, a grueling 2,000 mile race through hell. The pace and terrain are deadly enough but vengeful Paiute warriors and murdering saboteurs led by a sadistic giant threaten to turn the route into a trail of blood. Then one man with the guts to save the Pony Express stepped forward - the Derby Man.

The thundering engines of the Central Pacific are stalled in the quest to conquer the mighty Sierras. Only a mountain of a man, Darby Buckingham, could pound the railroad through the granite walls of trouble. Atop sheer rock cliffs just a death plunge away from the surging river a thousand feet below, braving punishing cold, Darby must lay down track, foot by hard-blasted foot, with a construction crew that is threatening to tear itself apart with vicious fighting.

Darby Buckingham, the West's hardest hitting, toughest fighting, fastest thinking hero, now charges into what threatens to be his most unbeatable challenge: helping the Union Pacific win the great railroad race across the continent. With time running out, the Derby Man must overcome ferocious Sioux and Cheyenne, brutal weather and terrain, the treacherous Missouri River and the toughest collection of men ever assembled to lay track.

Bruin Henry's not proud of the life he's led. Robbing stagecoaches cost him the love and devotion of his daughter. Along the way, he's been blamed for worse crimes - namely, cold-blooded murder. Ironically, the man who rode with him the day of the botched robbery and who is truly responsible is none other than his very own son-in-law, Link Cochran.

In Our American West, Volume 1, discover humor, tragedy, and courage in every one of these delightful stories. Gary McCarthy has been writing about the American West for 30 years and these are some of his favorite topics written - not for the expert or scholar - but for all the armchair admirers of thing historically written.

When Darby Buckham's fianceé Dolly Beavers fails to show for their announced wedding, he realizes something is wrong. He strikes out for Reno convinced she must be a victim of foul play. Darby is accompanied by an overzealous, aspiring young writer. Looking after this tenderfoot while tracking down Dolly's captors on a danger-ridden trail that winds through Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado, Darby wonders if he'll live to see his wedding day.

The Gila River flows gently through the parched Sonoran Desert. Along its banks, fierce Apaches, Pima farmers, Spaniards, and brash Americans all vie for control in a harsh and unforgiving land. There is Miguel Santana, a young Spaniard abandoned by his comrades; his Pima son Vitorio; Jacova, a woman whose indomitable spirit tamed a mighty Apache warrior; and the "man of three bloods".

The river belongs to all, and to none. On the banks of the Gila, their lives all come together, in love and in war.

Our American West, Volume 2 begins with America’s first colonizers, the prairie dogs, and how out on the ranges they were so hated by ranchers that they were almost made extinct. Conestoga Wagons were once called “prairie schooners” crossing America long before the famed Pony Express. The indomitable courage of Sarah Winnemucca, the “Prairie Princess” rivals that of a tall Swede named Showshoe Thompson who skied the snowy river passes of the Sierra Nevadas.

Haunted by the blood and bitterness of the Civil War, Houston Ballou escaped from Tennessee on the proud stallion High Fire, followed by his brother, Ruff; his sister, Dixie; and the last four mares from the Ballou farm, one of them heavy with foal. Threatened with extreme danger from either army, they head west to start a new life. Adding to their peril are deserters that stalk the roads. These men would kill for a few coins, more so for valuable horseflesh.

Darby Buckingham, the portly New York writer, had an appetite for local color to add punch to his newest dime novel. But when Hench Hightower rode into town with his half-dead herd of mustangs, Darby had no stomach for what he saw. It was time to end a vicious cattle baron's control of the Nevada range...time to end the murder of the mustangs. Darby looked like a dude, but he'd fight like a demon. Caught up in a stampeding adventure, Buckingham swore he'd live to tell the tale.

This is the third audiobook in the "Medicine Wagon Series". Henry and Samantha struggle against a town to save a family from typhoid fever. The townspeople refuse to help and openly threaten Henry. Ice is the major commodity needed to keep the fevers down, and little is available in town. Samantha volunteers to go to the nearby mountains and bring ice down in her wagon with the help of a local mountain man.

This is audiobook #2 in the Medicine Wagon series. Henry Wallace, now a fugitive and narrowly escaping death in Denver, is on his way to Cheyenne with Samantha in her medicine wagon. The pair discovers a farm house with a man dying under suspicious circumstances, and the wife refuses Henry's help as a doctor.

Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you’ll find entertaining. "The Roadrunner – Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked Calamity Jane lived up to her reputation as the West’s most infamous outlaw woman. “The Donner Party – Frozen Horror” describes the horror that led to cannibalism. The 49er Gold Rush ruined the lives of two ambitious and well-intentioned men, John Augustus Sutter and John Marshal...

For many bold pioneers headed west, the sweetest sight of all was the Humboldt River, a crooked ribbon of silver snaking through Nevada into California. But to Libby Pike and her family, the Humboldt brought sudden disaster. Stranded with her young daughter, Libby found herself surrounded by hostile renegades and an unforgiving wilderness. Then she stumbled upon a father and his two sons in search of a dream valley where they could settle and prosper.

In a land where justice was found in the barrel of a gun and the line between outlaw and citizen was thinly drawn, two women struggled, fought, and won. Rebecca, the elder, beautiful and defiant, found herself in the majestic mountains of Utah, forced to marry a brutal polygamist. All she wanted was to become a physician - and a free woman. Katie, younger, innocent, passionate, risked her life so her sister might have a chance for freedom. She risked all to establish a sprawling sheep ranch and prove that a woman could do it all - on her own.

Darby Buckingham becomes the unwilling owner of a herd of 12 dirty and disagreeable camels. Deciding to go into the freight business, Darby is faced with unfriendly Paiutes, scorching desert and steep, impassable trails. Add to that the horrors contrived by the murderous band of a competitor, an ugly giant known as Big Bert Jasper, and you have all the makings of an exciting story. The Derby Man will be hard pressed to come out ahead on this caper.

Sodbusters are about equal to farm animals on the social scale of the ranching community of Wyoming in the 1870s. Zach and Carrie Bennett, teenaged children of that wretched class, are determined to escape the scorn. They resolve to trek to Texas on foot. They are babes on the prairie, ignorant of the geography and hostility.