Action Fiction Western

A collection of stories capturing what it means to be a cowboy.

Caleb Marlowe carved out his own legend as frontier scout and lawman before arriving in the Colorado boomtown of Elkhorn. Famous for a lightning-quick draw and nerves of steel, he is mysterious, guarded, and unpredictable. Now, he wants to leave the past behind. But the past has a way of dogging a man.... When Doc Burnett, Caleb's only friend in town, goes missing, his daughter, Sheila, comes seeking Caleb's help. Newly arrived from the East, she hotly condemns the bloody frontier justice of the rifle and the six-gun. But this is outlaw country.

One man finds himself torn between two cultures in this sweeping tale of frontier life in post–Civil War era Texas. In the years following the American War Between the States, the once vacated military presence in west Texas is on the rise to protect the waves of settlers moving into the region. Living peaceably with the Mescalero Apache, half-breed former military scout Holton Lang promotes the tentative harmony between the US cavalry and the Native American population.

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

From the battlefield of Shiloh to the prisoner camp at Slocum, former Union soldier Cleveland Trewe has seen more than enough carnage for one lifetime. Now that the war is over he’s found work as a peacekeeper and prospector—the perfect set of survival skills for a town like Axle Bust, Nevada, a place seething with danger.

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.

Newly married, Justice and Nora honeymoon in New York City, where they rescue an orphan girl, track down Don Antonio Garza’s lawyer, and dole out some good, old fashioned, Western justice. Then it’s on to Mexico. Justice and an old friend ride into the wild borderlands, where they face bandidos, Apaches, rurales, and the formidable assassin, Mr. Rose.

In wide-open Arizona, outlaws run rampant since the authority of the local marshal ends at his town's borders. A different breed of peace officer is needed, and rancher Bentram Mosehan has accepted the responsibility of organizing a new Arizona State Police force. He's looking for men who are brave, honest, and lightning fast with a six-gun—talents that a drifter named Waco and his amigo, Doc Leroy, possess in abundance.

Morgan Clyde, former New York City peacekeeper and Union army veteran, is a man of righteous words and a gunfighter of uncanny skill. With deadly aim he has ended the reign of every badman to walk the dirt-packed streets of Indian Terriotry’s notorious Ironhead Station. But now he faces those who wear the badge.

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....

Justice and Nora are building a nice life on the ranch, but he must hit the trail again. Reinstated as a silent justice, he vows to balance his two lives. That vow is tested mightily when his sixteen-year-old daughter, Katie, falls for a young cowboy with a mysterious past. Meanwhile, the formidable Undergrove Gang is cutting a bloody swath across the Southwest. Then, as Justice hunts the gang, big trouble rides into Dos Pesos.

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

You'd think defeating a giant four-armed, catgirl supersoldier would buy you some peace. More like pieces. Sure, I get to spend time with Rufka, but it turns out stopping Ivicka isn't enough to get home. As we continue our quest to find a way to Earth, it's time to get efficient. Or so I'm told. Course Beth likes convoluted plans like I enjoy cuddles with Rufka and Smoulder, so it's not a surprise she's trying to rope me into taking more responsibility.

Vance Brewster is a hardworking young cowboy. Stovepipe and Wilbur are two new ranch hands working at his side. And all three are caught up in a brewing, trigger-happy Montana range war between the Rafter M and Three Rivers. Then the fury suddenly explodes - in a hail of gunfire, the three men must show their hands: they’re all hiding their true identities. With Vance falling in love with the daughter of the Three Rivers manager, and Stovepipe and Wilbur paid by a tycoon who needs the violence to stop, all three are in mortal danger.

Itching for a challenge, Count Frederick von Hausen sails from Germany to hunt down Smoke Jensen. And with a party of the toughest hardasses in the West, von Hausen shadows Smoke into Wyoming's high Rockies. But Smoke Jensen is the last mountain man, and he knows the country like the back of his hand. He also knows that these doomed backtrailers couldn't have picked a prettier place to be buried.

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.

Jake Jackson's white family was killed when he was a baby by a Comanche war party. Jake's red family raised him as White Wolf, Comanche warrior. He became a celebrated warrior of the tribe. When the Comanche were forced onto a reservation by the US military and the decimation of the buffalo herd, Jake transitioned to the white world and became known as the fastest gun on the western frontier.

The most wanted man in the West, Big Bob McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. With a gang of trigger-happy desperadoes willing to do his bidding, McGraw has robbed banks, stagecoaches, and railroads, raised hell ravaging towns, and left bodies littering the streets in his wake. Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’s been judged guilty by association.

Hot-blooded Georgiana Stockwell will break a man's heart while he's eating out of her hand. Moving from the East to join her schoolteacher sister in the rugged wilds of Tonto Basin, Arizona, Georgiana makes quite an impression. Despite her sister's best efforts, Georgiana creates a culture clash as her modern, free-spirited personality comes up against the code of the West, the unwritten law of the range that everyone is expected to follow.

It’s the summer of 1858, and scout Caleb Miller rides alone across the high plains, guiding a green patrol of cavalrymen back to Fort Laramie. But when he crosses paths with a Pawnee buffalo hunt gone wrong, smoke signals begin to rise—and Caleb knows trouble is brewing.