Showing results for "J" in Westerns

Lee Ryan knew horses. He had his herd and his ranch. He even had his eye on a redheaded lass that would make everything perfect. The only thing that stood in the way of having everything he ever wanted was, of all things, hay. He didn't need it, but someone else did. And it was that need that shook his world.

Tabby rode out of the Slant 6 after having spent more than four years working on the big spread. He wasn’t mad or even disappointed. It was just the way of life for a cowhand. The last three years of low prices for cattle had finally forced the boss to sell too much of his big herd to keep so many men. It also meant it would be difficult for him to find a new job. Being a cowhand was all Tabby knew, and it was a life that he enjoyed. He had no real responsibilities and unlike most of the other men, he had no ambitions to have his own ranch or even becoming a foreman.

Zack's eighteenth birthday was tomorrow, but he wasn’t expecting a party. He needed to get away from the family cattle ranch as fast as he could. There was nothing for him at his home, and he'd prefer facing the unknown to staying. Yet he knew that in leaving, he was taking the easy way out and should stay to protect his stepmother and brothers. He may have rationalized that he could do more if he left, but that voice in the back of his head kept whispering “coward.”

Matt Stone rode into Markleeville one hot dusk, with a wind at his back that promised summer thunder. He was tall and lean, with a narrow, clean-shaven face above the collar of his oilskin duster. His eyes were a hard pale blue, like chips of ice, and his black hair was long like an Apache's and held back with a strip of leather. The coat was open, revealing a buckskin vest and the pair of silver Colts at his hips.

Will thought the job to Robinson, New Mexico was going to be a simple determination of whether it was worthwhile for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad to build a spur to the town. They claimed to have a huge coal deposit, and Will would just have to do a quick evaluation of the viability to extract the coal. Then the simple trip turned into something totally different when he discovered a murder that had been committed by his brother just days before. The same brother who had tried to murder him when he was thirteen and did murder his fiancée when he was twenty-one.

Rhody Jones, the first mate of the schooner, Vivienne, walked from the docks into the streets of New Orleans. He’d been dismissed by the captain after the ship had barely survived the incredible battering from a powerful hurricane. He could have signed on to another ship returning to New England, but he wanted to try something different. He wanted to make a land voyage across the Southwestern United States to California and then maybe take a ship out of San Francisco.

AJ Smith had finally achieved his Big Dream. He had his ranch, a good-sized herd, and a healthy bank account. He thought he had finally added the last, most important part of the dream when Hannah Jacobsen, recent widow and mother of two, moved in with her sister in the neighboring ranch. But the reason she had become a widow would turn into a harrowing race across two counties, sometimes as the pursuer and other times as the pursued.

They came out of the sun and through the dust cloud created by the herd, firing their Winchesters and killing the men who were moving the cattle to Abilene. Each man fell just minutes after the attack began, and the stampeding cattle finished the job that the rustlers’ .44s had started. Just hours later, the herd was already gone, the dust settled, and bodies were strewn along the ground. But one stirred and would never forget what he saw as his eyes opened.

James Everett was desperate. When his daughter had been kidnapped, and he couldn’t raise enough money for the ransom demand, no one; not the law, not the Pinkertons, and not even the army would intervene to try and free her. He had even had his offer of five thousand dollars turned down by a bounty hunter. But the bounty hunter suggested another man, one who had left the business almost two years ago but warned James that there was only a remote possibility that he would take the job. Yet no matter how slim it may be, James knew he had to try that last hope, his daughter’s only Chance.

Laramie had just been hit by the Clayton gang, leaving Sheriff Joe Tate without any deputies to serve the entire county. But, as bad as the gunfight had been, the visitor to his office to file a complaint for something that wasn’t even a crime turned out to be much more significant and life-changing.

Chicken Charlie was being shut out by the town and didn't know why. No one would buy her eggs or chickens. Then Ben Arden arrived in town, and suddenly chickens were the least of her concerns.

When the Northern Pacific had ceased operations at the start of the Panic of 73, Cap had been stranded with his survey crew in the middle of Montana Territory. Since then, he’d lived a hard, solitary life. Recently he’s spent a few months as a gambler in the untamed town of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. But neither was what he wanted out of life. When he heard that the Northern Pacific had come out of bankruptcy and would soon start laying track west out of Bismarck, he left Deadwood in the hope of returning to his old life. Just a day’s ride from Bismarck, he discovered a disaster.

Matt Stone rode a huge, sleek black horse with a bullet scar showing in white hairs across one flank. Its name was Lucky. That horse had carried him through Gettysburg alive, and then taken him west, where he'd spent three years wandering, trying to get the echoes of battle out of his head. He managed to escape death in Gettysburg, and just when he begins to believe he has something good with Anne, destiny takes a shot and sends everything spinning out of control.

Keith watched his young cousin ride away and shook his head. He would be leading a party into the wilderness which was what they both did for a living. But Angus wasn’t escorting a typical hunting party. He was taking a newlywed couple into the deep forests of Washington Territory because they wanted to find a fabled sasquatch.

United States Marshal War Adams stared at the telegram in disbelief. His father had been murdered? As difficult as it was to come to grips with the news, it would become more disturbing when he discovered that the person arrested for the crime was the nurse that his father had hired to ease his suffering from his killing disease. Her position gave her both the means and opportunity to commit the crime, and he knew that the nurse was the same woman whose husband he had shot and killed years earlier, giving her the motive.

Gabe Owens had been assigned to investigate a case of timber poaching near Missoula in Montana Territory that could have been handled by a less experienced agent of the railroad, but the case had changed dramatically after the apparent murder of the station manager. What made it difficult for Gabe was that the station manager may have been shot by his wife, a woman he’d proposed to years earlier.

Aaron hadn’t been caught by surprise by the early arrival of the Nebraska blizzard in November, so after hunkering down for the night to wait out the snow and gale-like winds, he set out in the predawn to resume his trek across the plains to get to his ranch. While he may not have been surprised by the storm, he was soon stunned by what he discovered on the frozen ground southwest of Scotts Bluff.

When the girl of his dreams turns out not to be who he thought she was, Lenny J. decides he is better off staying single for a while. There was no one else in Mission Valley who interested him. There was, however, someone who drove him crazy. Lark Kingston is a spoiled and entitled daddy’s girl. She’s the daughter of Victor Kingston, a relative newcomer by Mission Valley standards, and Lark is his only child. When the Kingston Ranch hires Lenny J. to help with a troublesome horse, he finds himself dealing with Lark while her father is away.

When the postal inspector in Carson City discovered a counterfeit one-dollar bill, he notified the Secret Service. That was why they’d been created just a decade earlier. Secret Service Agent Sean Brady was assigned to the case and prepared to make the day-long train ride from Ogden to start his investigation. Before he left, he was presented with a minor mystery by the Union Pacific freight manager that had nothing to do with counterfeiting.

Jake Fletcher thought he’d been blessed among all men when he stood at the aisle across from his bride. How such an ordinary man like himself had won her heart still astounded him. It wasn’t until a month later that he understood what had attracted her attention, and that discovery would drive him across the plains of Colorado and Kansas to find her.