Showing results by author "Dusty Richards" in All Categories

Voted the favorite stories of readers around the world! In tales from heart-warming to bone-chilling, authors from across the country take us back to the lives and times of the western frontier, where the new culture met the old and battles were fought, love born, and dreams achieved—or lost. This collection of the Tales voted Best by readers each month at www.FrontierTales.com, plus an Editor's Choice, make 13 wonderful stories of the Old West. Meet civil war soldiers, sheriffs, grifters and gunslingers, natives and ne'er-do-wells, and the women and men who pioneered this vast new land. ...

A landmark feat of innovation is about to change the American West forever. With electric cables stretching from the Colorado River to Gallup, New Mexico, a new telegraph system will connect the settlers of the Arizona Territory to rest of the country - a dream come true for rancher Chet Byrnes and his family. But laying 400 miles of steel wire can be a deadly task. Chet has to face off with hired henchmen who would kill to sabotage the project. And Chet's nephew JD has his hands full with cutthroat rustlers on the Mexican border.

Vince was a mustanger with a solitary camp high in the Rusty Hills where he worked his operation alone. Then on a trip back from selling some mustangs, he came across Molly....

Whip Station, a critical stop on the Butterfield stagecoach line, is dead smack in the middle of no-man's land. The lawless call it an easy target. Joe O'Malley calls it home. If anybody can tame a wild, violent territory, it's the seasoned frontiersman. So can his family, who have with the same pride and honor coursing through their veins. Helping to plant roots is his son Jackson, a former wrangler married to a steadying force of nature. Joe's grandchildren have their own brand of grit. The boy - a firebrand with a knife. The girl - book-smart and wicked-wise.

Clint and Hamp are saddle partners to the end. So when Clint winds up behind bars for sending a double-dealing card cheat to his reward, Hamp will do anything to raise money to bribe the guards to set him free - even marry the daughter of the man who'll help him get the cash. Hamp comes to the aid of his hot-tempered friend, Clint, after he is jailed for killing a cheating gambler, bribing the guards to let him go, but no sooner is Clint free than he kills a local rancher with vengeful friends who will do anything to see Clint hanged.

Building a ranching empire is one thing - keeping it out of the hands of robbers, kidnappers, murderers, embezzlers, and every no good opportunist crawling through the Arizona desert is a daily grind for Chet Byrnes. He’s just as likely to rescue a stolen daughter as he is to recover rustled cattle on any given day. But with a family to keep safe and enough real target practice to keep his aim deadly, nothing’s going to stop Chet from bringing his ranch into a bold new era.

Now a deputy US Marshal, Chet Byrnes hunts down the baddest hombres the west can throw at him. Chet and his crew must travel to New Mexico to free his cousin J.D. from a corrupt sheriff and his band of deputies. New allies will emerge to help Chet as he squares off with his greatest challenge yet; stopping bandits along the Arizona-Mexico border. Friendship will carry Chet across the Mexican border into a land where the only justice is found at the end of a six-gun.

In this third novel in Dusty Richards' Spur Award-winning Herschel Baker series, a rawhide-tough horse thief rides up from Mexico with a lightning-quick draw that leaves a trail of dead criminals in his wake. His son Herschel now wears a badge, but many years have passed since he left his boy to chase down sunsets.

Chet Byrnes has built a ranching empire from the ground up. And he’s defended it with his sweat, blood, and a ragtag band of ranch-hand fighters. Now a beautiful young Spanish widow comes into Chet’s life, just as he starts off in search of a lost cattle drive. The search leads into the eye of a sprawling, violent storm. Chet and his men — and his seductive new woman — end up on a wild ride through Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, where authorities want to confiscate the beeves for trespassing.

From a woman who lays claim to Chet's heart to a land ripe for grazing, the Arizona territory begins to open its arms to the dauntless determination of the Byrnes family. But with every success there comes a rising danger. There’s a sheriff who refuses to do his job. Trigger happy outlaws competing to kill them. And a mysterious rancher who’s hell bent on running a herd across Chet's land - and forcing the Texan into a war...

The Byrnes family has fought fiercely for its ranching empire. And with success comes the fate of empires: The Byrnes have taken in far-flung family members, hired hands, and folks looking for another chance at life. The Byrnes clan has taken their fair share of hurt, too, taking on outlaws too deadly and powerful for the law.

Two years later and the feud rages on between the Byrnes and Reynolds families. Four generations of the Byrnes Family had built a life in Texas, only to have it shattered. Hoping to find safe haven for his family Chet Byrnes and his nephew Heck set off to find a new ranch in the Arizona Territory. But even the promising ranch land in Arizona may hold deadly enemies old and new.

Even the toughest and most cunning lawman in Texas has his limits. With nothing to go on but five bloody bodies, a cracked safe, and an empty jail, Dell works the fringe of his sleepy western town - the forgotten, the invisible, those who often see without being seen. The more he learns, though, the more he wishes he could forget. In search of the truth, Dell finds himself pulled into a dark world of murder, deception, and brutality the likes of which he never imagined.

A drunken plan to make some quick money with two friends landed drifter Whit Ralston in the Yuma Territorial Prison - the worst prison in Arizona. Now he's doing hard time in the inferno the inmates call the Hell Hole, counting the days until his release. He's vowed never to do anything so stupid again, but that becomes a hard promise to keep when his crazy cellmate starts talking about a load of stolen gold stashed up in the mountains.

When Zekial Broome stops a sadistic slave chaser, Grissum McCord, from whipping his captive, he and the girl have no choice but to flee west into the untamed lands of the wild frontier. If they can make it to the Green River country, no one will ever find them. What they don't count on is McCord. With a 500-dollar bounty at stake and revenge in his heart, he'll follow them to hell and back, for as long as it takes. He's murdered before, but the revenge he plans for the buckskin-clad Broome would make a strong man quail.

Dusty Richards bases his scores of Western novels on extensive research on the Old West. With an unflinchingview of the violence and cruelty that marked both sides of the Indian conflicts, he spins the riveting tale of Apachescout Deuces. Unjustly condemned for murder, he escapes his guard and disappears into the wilderness. Now hot on his trail is a U.S. Marshal determined to catch Deuces, no matter what the cost.

Twin brothers Andrew and Jackson Franks have lived and worked under the iron fist of their father, Prior, for as long as they can remember. But when a petty household argument turns violent, and Prior shoots and kills their mother before turning the gun upon himself, the boys are left with nothing but each other and the family's hardscrabble South Texas ranch.

All he wants is a job as a ranch foreman. He'd tried in Montana, but ended up in a gunfight with a pair of ugly-looking brothers over a horse. Leaving one dead and the other swearing revenge, Norm figures it'd be wise to make himself scarce. He heads south, to Nebraska. Instead of work, though, he finds something he never expected--a partner. Edith is a beautiful young woman with a sordid past of her own.

The Natural puts you in the boots of famed rodeo announcer Brad Turner, racing his horse Golden Boy into the arena and welcoming the crowd to a pro rodeo performance in Jackson, Mississippi. You'll hit the road with Brad as he crisscrosses the country, struggling with life, love, and business on the pro rodeo circuit. You'll meet Zola Johns, the rebellious, barrel-racing beauty with her eye on the prize of winning a national championship, and Shoat Krammer, the young rough-and-tumble rookie that's the real natural coming up the hard way.

Charlie Brackeen owns the big ranch that takes up the entire north end of drought-stricken Callie County. When he pushes his B-Bar-M cattle south of their own range, it’s no mistake - it’s a hostile takeover, enforced by Sheriff Alex Woodbridge, the tough, one-eyed former Texas Ranger who’s in Brackeen’s pocket. They want the small ranchers leaderless and isolated so they can be picked off one by one and forced to sell their land. They just didn’t count on Jed Mahan.