Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

A case of mistaken identity marked O’Brien out for death the minute he rode into Nebraska. A feud had erupted between the local farmers and a scheming loan agent who figured to sell them out. Both sides pegged O’Brien as a vicious gunman named Wes Dexter, who had been hired to settle the matter with violence. That made him a hero to some.... and a target for others.

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.

A damsel in distress, Wyatt Earp called her. And he was right, too. Because as soon as soon as Luke Heller got involved with the beautiful Irene Lawrence, he found himself up to his neck in murder, intrigue and a mysterious deal so big that it could only end - explosively - seven hundred miles away, on the notorious Barbary Coast. En route, Heller found himself battling thick-armed bullies and bloodthirsty Chinese hatchet-men determined to give him a double profile.

For more than 10 years Jim Allison packed a marshal's badge in the violent Indian Nations. When he finally quit, it was to move to New Mexico and get into the cattle business. For a time life was hard but good. But then a vicious killer came along and shattered his peaceful existence.

It started with a slaughter and ended with a massacre, and by the finish of it, Sam Judge and Matt Dury had seen enough bloodshed to last them a lifetime. But the gun-fast men from Texas had signed on to help an army officer get his little girl back from the Apache renegades who’d kidnapped her, and once they gave their word, nothing would stop them from seeing a job through.

After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Mississippi-born Sam Lockwood was posted to far-away Arizona Territory, where he soon grew to love the hostile desert known as Apacheria. But the Civil War dragged him back to Mississippi, where he experienced all the horrors of a savage conflict, including the hell-on-earth that was the Union prison-camp known as the Rat Hole.

King Creek was a rough-and-ready mining town set right in the heart of the Nevada goldfields. There was no law to speak of except Stover's Law - and it was ruthlessly enforced by one greedy woman, her three callous sons, and a dozen hired gunmen. The situation was quickly going from bad to worse. A failed assassination attempt had left the only man capable of defying the freebooters crippled for life, and his wife was at her wits' end.

It's the autumn of 1897, and men are flocking to the wild and woolly Yukon Territory in search of gold. But soldier-for-hire Tom Cannon had a different reason for making the hazardous trek north. The one-time cavalry officer has been hired to find Emmet Lawrence, a greenhorn who had gone to seek his fortune and then disappeared. Time and again, as Cannon searched the icy wastes and snow-capped mountains, he drew a blank. No one remembered Lawrence or knew where to find him.

Two cold-blooded killers and one stormy night of murder... together they resulted in a posse of three ill-matched man-hunters. But each of them had his own reasons for riding into Redbird Valley after the killers. For Marshal Cord, it wasn't only duty, it was personal. Charlie Pearson had something to prove - and not only to himself. As for Jack Sumlock... well, he tagged along because one of the killers was his own grandson. Up in the isolated high country, all three had to face their own demons.

The choice was simple. Professional fighting man Carter O'Brien could stick around Scot's Post, California, and risk taking a bullet in the back from a bully-boy with a score to settle... or he could ride up into the treacherous, winter-locked mountains on an impossible mission of mercy. They both came down to the same thing - almost certain death. But because O'Brien had never been one to pass up a challenge, he chose the mountains.

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.

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....

Jesse Glover was minding his own business when Ulysses S. Grant summoned him to Washington and asked him to quit the life of a cowboy and go keep Arizona safe from the likes of Cochise and Geronimo. So Jesse saddled up and headed for Fort Bowie, and its Indian-hating commanding officer, Major Nicholas Calloway. Along the way he saved a beautiful White Mountain Apache girl named Morning Star from a monstrous fate.