Frank Carlson Library

Cowboy had been drifting ever since he left his home in Yellow House Creek, Texas, moving from ranch to ranch, making enough money to buy the Triple X Ranch. It was a bargain...or so it seemed.

Out on the frontier, there are two kinds of men. There's the kind who's tough with a gun in his hand, who preys on anyone or anything weaker than himself. And then there's the kind like Stillwater Smith. Long and lean, Stillwater's a grizzled Civil War veteran. He doesn't take easily to killing, but he's always ready to fight for what he believes in. And you can only push him so far, as Asa Wheeler, wealthy cattle rancher, is about to find out. Wheeler's...

Tenderfoot Harrison Wilke wondered about the three men: heavily armed, avoiding the town, carrying gold coin in their saddlebags. Alert. Surly. Arrogant. Robbers, Harrison concluded; they must have robbed a bank or a train. Harrison thought about the money in the saddlebags while he worked. He had no idea how much was there or where it might have come from. But he was convinced that these three unpleasant men had come by its possession dishonestly....

Nobody was stopping Leon Moses from settling on the spread he had bought with his pay from long, hard years with the 10th Cavalry. Not the slick lawyer who cheated him on the sale. Not the rustlers who ran off his stock. Not the law that turned its back on him. Not the neighboring ranchers who turned their guns on him. Not the attacking Apaches who turned the sea of grass red with blood. Leon Moses was a black who had to show a lot of folks that courage...

Heller's a law school dropout with a head for justice that's as hard as the Rockies and with a mile-wide stubborn streak. So he hires out to hopeless cases, hurtling into action when some big guy is putting the squeeze on a little guy - or gal. Heller fights hard and plays harder.

Arnie Rasmussen was big, with the general build of a young ox, and he may not have known much, but he knew one thing: He loved Katherine Mulraney. Sure, she was too good for him; she was beautiful and fine, and he was, well, just Arnie. Just as he was steeling his nerve to talk to her, she disappeared. Folks said she up and ran off with a fancy traveling man, but Arnie couldn't believe that. So he set off after her. But the Wyoming Territory was a...

The Keystone Kid had come all the way from Pennsylvania to be a cowboy, and stepped off the train dressed to the teeth in an atrocious freshly bought Western outfit. He almost instantly became the butt of some unpleasant jokes in the local bar. He made no attempt to fight back. He gained two things that day – his name, the "Keystone Kid," and his reputation as a coward.

Charlie Roy and pale, skinny Sir Arthur, an English gentleman, arrive at the Crown B ranch north of Cheyenne which is owned by the Sir's sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was widowed the past winter, and left with a ranch that lost nearly all its beef stock from the brutal 86'-87' winter freeze. Additionally, Elizabeth's dead husband's former partner, Justin Harper, is hell-bent on taking over her ranch. But what Harper and his boys don't figure on is...