Frank Carlson Library

In this collection of five short novels, each story follows a succinct pulp formula: accurate historical detail, concise and clever plots, subtle suspense, strong male and female characters, powerful macho conflict, chaste romance, and plenty of graphic, bloody gunplay and knife fights. In “Murder Stalks the Fur Trails,” a cheating Wyoming fur trader tries to stop a party of free trappers from going independent, with a double-cross, ambush, and...

Luke Ransom was just eighteen years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed one-hundred enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River -- the longest in North America -- all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and hostile...

In September 1823, three men met at Rainy Lake House, a Hudson's Bay Company trading post near the Boundary Waters. Dr. John McLoughlin, the proprietor of Rainy Lake House, was in charge of the borderlands west of Lake Superior, where he was tasked with opposing the petty traders who operated out of US territory. Major Stephen H. Long, an officer in the US Army Topographical Engineers, was there on an expedition to explore the wooded borderlands west...

Preacher is on the move, joining a springtime trail drive led by freewheeling Wiley Courtland. Wiley has good horses to deliver to the American Fur Company at Fort Gifford. Red Knife's war party has other plans. Fighting their way to safety, the horse traders make it to Fort Gifford - where the beautiful wife of the fort's commander makes a raid of her own with Wiley. As jealousy erupts, Red Knife's bloodthirsty legion comes galloping over the horizon....

This book describes the fur trade in the western wilderness beyond the Mississippi River and discusses the western exploration by mountain men.