Jack Page was a living legend - a Union Army sharpshooter, scout, Indian fighter, and US Marshal. Ash Colter, by contrast, was a mild-mannered orphan. They were complete opposites. And yet, theirs was a partnership forged in blood and destined to go down in history. These were the men who survived the famous Snake River Shootout, the men who led Colonel George Armstrong Custer to one of his most controversial victories against the Cheyenne.

It was the kind of sleepy little Texas town where nothing ever happened. Then eight masked men robbed the train from Sterling City and left a handful of bodies behind them, and pretty soon the marshal was up to his badge in problems. First of all there was the murder of one of Coffin Creek's most respected citizens to solve. Then there was the sudden, unwelcome appearance of a federal lawman who figured Marshal Baker was too old for his job.

Ben Crawford was one of the best lawmen in the business, and when a man named Kane offered him a hundred bucks a month to keep the peace in the fresh, raw town he'd just founded, it sounded exactly like the challenge he'd been looking for. So he took the job...and spent the next 12 years just waiting for something to happen. It never did. In fact, life in Kane's Crossing, New Mexico, grew so damn quiet that the townsfolk eventually decided they didn't really need a lawman at all. But fate had other ideas, because all hell was destined to break loose....

When you've got only five shots left, you have to make each one count. Like the outlaw whose quest for revenge didn't quite go according to plan. Or the cowboy who ended up using a most unusual weapon to defeat his Cheyenne enemy. Then there was the storekeeper who had to face his worst fear; the down-at-heel sheepherder who had to set past hatreds aside when a bunch of renegade Comanches went on the warpath; and the elderly couple who struggled to keep a secret that threatened to tear them apart.

A desperate telegram from young Lane Jenkins brought Flint McKay north to Montana, where Randolph Billington was using every dirty trick in the book to take over the territory. But what could Flint do about it? He was just an ageing drifter with failing eyesight. He had no home and no kin, just a horse, a saddle and a pistol he’d won in a bunkhouse poker game.

Hunter took his Colt from leather and checked it over one last time. He should have guessed his vengeance-quest would end in gunplay. Guns had played such a large part in it already; why shouldn't they have the last word? He stepped outside. The street was deserted save for the man who'd called him out, who stood 20 yards away - the most dangerous gunfighter in the whole south-west. Hunter saw faces watching him through dusty windows, and wondered whose side they were on.

They said that Chase Donovan had been a Texas Ranger for too long, that he'd become a law unto himself and that they weren't prepared to put up with his maverick, gun-fast ways any longer. So they took away his badge and kicked him out of the battalion and, almost before he knew it, he'd turned into a full-time drunk.

Ranch foreman Ward McQueen recognizes trouble when he sees it - and trouble is what the Texan sees when he spies the tracks of a wounded man in the middle of the big Tumbling K spread. In town, he learns that a tinhorn gambler has just won the ranch next to the Tumbling K in a dirty card game - and is turning his oily gaze toward the K's pretty owner, Miss Ruth Kermitt.

In these extraordinary stories, we meet a man who is forced to defend himself by taking another’s life - and must pay for his actions in a most punishing manner; a young thrill-seeker who finally finds a place he can call home, and vows to stay there - regardless of the man who tries to stand in his way; and a drifter who honors a deathbed promise to a stranger by embarking on an unlikely mission of mercy.

Justice is a drifter with no fear and no memory, trailed by a violent past. Nora is a beautiful widow bravely raising her young son on an isolated New Mexican ranch. When a ruthless cattle baron pushes longhorns into the valley, Justice vows to protect Nora and her boy. But how can he succeed against thirty hired guns… including the four outlaws who left him for dead?

In Stand Proud, one of his most controversial novels, legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton takes on a character who is not as easy to like as he is to admire. Frank Claymore is cantankerous, stubborn, and intolerant - just the qualities that make him a success as an open-range cattle rancher on the West Texas frontier.

Where the real frontier begins...A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt.... A gunfighter, tired of violence, finds himself pushed down a trail of bloody revenge.... From purple sage to gambler's gold, from a senorita's tempting smile to a splash of blood in the dust, here are stories with a distinctive L'Amour twist.

A quiet farmer defends his honor in a moment of panic and luck...only to find true courage on the run from the dead man's brothers.

The open West was a land where wanderers could find themselves a home--a home to fight for, to be changed by, sometimes to die for. From a has-been boxer to a ranch hand taking on his bosses' troubles, the characters in these classic Louis L'Amour short stories are all "riding for the brand" - staying loyal to what matters.

Most folks would call Kim Sartain an easygoing, peace-loving man. But the few who crossed the young drifter knew there was nothing he liked better than a good fight. When cattleman Jim Targ challenges Sartain's right to ride across an unclaimed stretch of meadow, Sartain decides he'll do better than ride through: He'll put down stakes there and homestead the land. So there's more at risk than land and pride when Targ hires a gunman to teach Sartain a permanent - and deadly - lesson

He began his life as a slave. During the Civil War he escaped and lived among the Indians in the Oklahoma Territories. He learned to ride, shoot and track prey from his adopted people. When the war ended, he was recruited as one of the first black marshals in the history of the west.