Showing results by author "Ralph Compton" in All Categories

An extraordinary saga of the trail-blazing cowboys who made their fortune driving cattle from Texas to the Great Frontier. Across the Pecos, the Rio Colorado and La Panza mountains, the Texans and their longhorns kept charging-all the way to California gold!

Young Jed and Tim Strange lost their father to an outlaw's bullet, and now, their mother has succumbed to a fatal illness. Unable to farm their land due to a lack of funds, the twins set out to find their sister - who left home to avenge their father's death more than a year ago. Farm life hasn't prepared the twins for the rough-and-tumble cow towns west of Missouri. Before they even begin their search, they're accused of a murder they didn't commit. Just barely escaping a posse's rope, the twins are on the run - wounded, hounded by the law, and desperately seeking the true killers.

Rancher Ty Farraday's hunt for stray cattle takes a turn for the worse when he discovers a shallow grave and the body of wealthy Alton Winstead, the owner of the Double-Cross Ranch. Ty's first frantic thoughts are of Winstead's widow, Sue-Ellen, who picked Alton over him. Unfortunately, she chose poorly. Alton masterminded a crime and left his helpers to swing for it. Hungry for revenge, the murderous headcases have overrun the Double-Cross and are holding Sue-Ellen prisoner.

Matt Wheeler was a legend in the West. His fast gun and dedication to justice made him a sought-after lawman for hire, but all of that promise vanished one sunny day when his wife was shot down in cold blood by a heartless bank robber. The thirst for vengeance sent Wheeler on a quest to find the killer. For taking the law into his own hands, the former lawman was convicted and sent to prison. Seven and a half years have passed, and Wheeler has completed his sentence. One question remains: Will he ride for vengeance or for justice?

Nathan Stone returns to his Virginia home to discover that the horrors of the Civil War are not over; his family has been wiped out, and their home burned by seven renegades. Nathan swears an oath on his father’s grave to find and kill each of the men responsible. He begins a lonely journey that will take him south and west, on a vengeance trail that crosses the paths of some infamous figures.

Nathan Stone, The Gunfighter, lies dead in the street, a victim of the ruthless Sandlin gang. Behind him he leaves his guns and the son he had hardly known - a former lawman named Wes is about to teach these killers just what it means to be his father's son. Swearing vengeance, he takes up his father’s guns. But little does he know that the odds are even more against him than he thinks - and that to get revenge for a dead man, he might have to die himself.

Set on rescuing their old friend Clay Duval who is trapped inside war-torn Mexico, Gill and Van Austin, nephews of Texas founder Stephen Austin, cross the border after him and soon discover half of Mexico's army wants them dead. Taken prisoner by Santa Anna's soldiers, the brothers make a daring escape and head into Durango country, where they stumble on a valley full of longhorns—and a chance to build a future north of the border. All they have to do now is break Duval out of prison and drive the cattle to safety.

The Border Empire trilogy concludes, as Wes Stone’s quest for revenge leads him to destroy the plot by the Golden Dragon gang to endanger US currency by switching counterfeit coins for real ones within the walls of four different mints in the southwest. Battling long odds and high stakes, Stone and his friends El Lobo and Byron Silver must solve a double kidnapping, face a mercenary army of renegades from the Sandlin gang who are assembling in Durango, and avoid the many young hotheads who seek to add to their own reputations by challenging Wes’s skill with a gun.

In her disguise as "Danny Duggin," Danielle Strange has spent the past two years hunting down the outlaws who murdered her father. Reunited with her brothers, the twins Tim and Jed, she plans to take her war across the border into Mexico - unaware she's being pursued by a US Federal Marshal.... Saul Delmano comes from a powerful family of cattle-men whose business stretches from the Southwestern territories into Mexico. He's put a $2,000 reward on "Danny Duggin's" head, tempting every outlaw and bounty hunter across the West to try to collect it.

Young twins Jed and Tim Strange set out to find their sister, who left home to avenge their father's murder over a year ago. But when they're accused of a murder they didn't commit, they must go on the run to find the true killers.

On a cattle drive north, young gun Danielle Strange falls in love with one of the drovers. Now she must choose between letting him, the last of her father's murderers, go free - and sacrificing her own life to send the bushwhacker to Hell.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.

Eight years ago, vicious bandits killed Marshal Tobias Cassidy and left his daughter for dead. They thought they got away clean. Now a contest to determine the top shootist in the Wild West is set to take place in Fortune’s Cross and lady gunslinger Hope Cassidy has come to town…only it’s not for glory, it’s for vengeance. After gunning down one of the men who murdered her father, Hope is given a stark choice: swing from a rope, or take the dead man’s place in the contest.

After years as a professional gambler - and a deadly shootout on a riverboat casino - Tom Calvert and his young protégé, Asher Smith, have survived an arduous journey across the frontier to Friendly Field, Idaho. The bucolic Quaker community welcomes them with open arms, and soon Tom is courting a widow and learning, to his surprise, to enjoy the quiet life. Then an elder of Friendly Field is found murdered, and the townsfolk start whispering about the work of the devil. Tom doesn’t believe in the devil, just the evil that men do, and he resolves to solve the gruesome crime.

Brothers Clay and Cal Breckenridge, sons of a hardscrabble East Texas farmer, never did see eye to eye. Clay, the eldest, returned home after the Civil War to help his father run the family farm; Cal deserted his military post and disappeared into a new life with a new name. Everyone knew who was the good son and who was the bad. Clay had almost forgotten his wayward brother until the morning a limping horse approaches the farm with young Cal Breckenridge’s body slumped in the saddle, shot in the back.

Marshal John Beck was the law in the dangerous town of Mother Lode, Arizona. On his own, he'd managed to keep bandits, rustlers, and desperados at bay. It was a tough job for one man to handle, but he made it work...until the day Bram Hogan and his Brickhouse Gang got the drop on the lawman. They beat Beck to within an inch of his life and dropped him in the desert, where nothing but a slow, painful death awaited him. But the gang underestimated Beck. Even at his lowest point, he found a way to survive.

John Stockbridge was once a peaceful man of medicine. Now, he's better known as Dr. Vengeance, a man who is as fast with a shotgun as any other gunfighter is with a six-gun. The murders of his wife and child left him with an aching hole where his soul once was. His only solace comes from wandering the West. Along the way, he encounters a woman and her two children searching for their missing fur-trapper husband/father in the Rockies. In the process, they run afoul of some former Confederates who have amassed money and local power by robbing those traveling west through a mountain pass.

Long John Coons, the Cajun son of a conjuring woman, was driving 2,000 head of cattle north from Texas to the railroad in Kansas - through Indian Territory and outlaw strongholds. At his side was a beautiful woman with a sordid past, three ex-cattle rustlers, some renegate Indians, Mexican vanqueros, and a straight-laced young trail boss. And while Long John tried to keep his hot headed crew from killing each other before they reached the end of the line, the biggest dangers was waiting up ahead.

Brian Middleton left his father's ranch long ago to make his own way. But now, he's returned to claim the land his late father left him -- and learns the hard way that if you want to keep something in the wild West, you have to fight for it. With local lowlifes and shady con-men after the Dancing M ranch, Middleton has no choice but to make a stand....

An outbreak of hostilities with Comanches has disrupted the usual trail routes. But Mase Durst must get his cows from his Texas ranch to the railway up in Wichita, Kansas, or face losing his land, which the bank is fixing to foreclose on. He's forced to take his herd on a little-used route called the Red Trail - little used for good reasons. It’s a tough trek: dangerous, narrow, and fraught with banditry.