Showing results by author "Ralph Compton" in All Categories

In the 1870s, as the country recovered from the War Between the States, the expansion of railroads and the discovery of gold opened the American west to both civilization and savagery. Men and women on both sides of the law were drawn by the chance to make a fortune, and there was often a big difference between Law and Justice. Into this whirlwind rode Nathan Stone, a man whose trail of vengeance gave him a reputation for speed with a gun. He tracked and killed the seven men who murdered his family after the war.

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.

Outlaw Wes Cavanaugh knows that crime doesn't always pay - at least not much. That's why he and his partner, Mose, are willing to pay Jimmy Stock for information on a job that's guaranteed to pay off big. Jimmy's made a career of selling tips to bandits, but the job he sells Wes - a payroll train about to leave Omaha - requires more than information.

The only folk left behind in Apache Creek are ghosts, including Marshall Sam Pace. Three years of solitude have turned Sam into a phantom, but when a woman on the run stumbles into town, the former lawman must protect her and make use of gunslinger skills long out of practice...

Frontier life is hard enough without having kids to worry about - especially for a widower like Paul Meakes. Still, he's settled where he is and resolved to stay in the small Colorado town his son and daughter call home. So when his daughter is hit by a seemingly poisoned arrow during an Indian raid, Paul is determined to track down the Comanche villains who hurt his little girl - and bring them to justice with the help of Indian hunter Hank Adley, a hired gun who's got business of his own with the tribe.

Willis Lander was once the T-Bar ranch's best bronc buster. Then came the day when a stallion as black as pitch and as mean as a rattler shattered his knee. Unable to perform the duties required of a cowboy, Willis took the only job he felt capable of handling - minding the line shack 40 miles from the ranch - and secluded himself from the pity of his peers in the Wyoming wilderness. Now, the T-Bar is being sold, leaving Willis to wonder whether the new owner will want to keep a broken bronc buster on the payroll.

Nathan Stone was a living legend in the West as a lawman, as an outlaw, as a gambler, as a wanderer through the wildest towns and terrain. He blazed a vengeance trail, giving no quarter and asking for none. Fearlessly, he played his cards and used his Colt .45s as best he could in games of chance, skill, and savagery, for stakes of life or death. Now he was riding on a course that would test his rawhide nerve and lightning draw against the likes of Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the fleeing James brothers, and the incredible John Wesley Hardin....

In Omaha, Tom Calvert boards a riverboat to play high-stakes poker, but accusations of cheating cause some serious trouble, and a deadly gun battle ensues. Tom is injured and knows that his enemies will be looking for him, so he reluctantly accepts a bargain from young stowaway Asher. In exchange for Calvert teaching him gunslinging skills, Asher will guide them to a possibly mythical town of peace and plenty called Friendly Field. To get there they just have to battle assassins, dangerous Shoshone, and the rough wilderness of the Oregon Trail.

A towering legend among chroniclers of the Old West, Ralph Compton penned searing tales of the highest entertainment. In this fast-paced actioner, Detective Sergeant John McBride gets while the gettin's good when a New York gangster puts a price on his head. But after landing in High Hopes, Colorado, McBride quickly finds that his troubles with the criminal sect are just beginning.

The USA Today best-selling Ralph Compton series drives forward with this tale of a man looking to abandon his past and carve himself an honest future. John McBride purchases a restaurant in the eerily named town of Suicide. But marauding Apaches, rampaging outlaws, and even the townsfolk are driving tensions sky high - and McBride isn't exactly a welcome newcomer.

Dane Kramer looks forward to the day when his sprawling Oklahoma cattle ranch will truly be his - no strings attached. With only one more bank payment to make and a buyer in Omaha ready to pay top dollar for a herd of Herefords, he should finally have the banker, Earl Throckmorton, off his back. But Earl has a plan to keep the ranch for himself, and if he has his way, Dane's herd will never make it across the Omaha Trail - and Dane won't make it home alive.

Before hearing the call of the Lord, Paul had seen more than his share of sin - mostly his own. But since he came to minister to the small town of Pueblito Verde, most of what he sees are tamer transgressions. Knowing his own past, Paul believes the occasional mistake doesn' t make someone truly evil. But some men are more evil than others. When the brutal Jack Kerrigan and his band of ruffians hit town, Paul' s new life starts to go bad.

His wife is gone to tuberculosis, his reputation was lost in the war, most of his life has already passed by, and now, even his horse has been taken by colic. All Carpenter has left are the men from his Army company. During the journey to California to reunite with them, he strikes up a friendship with Rafael Silva, an educated man making for the same town to start up a rifle factory. When they arrive, Carpenter's former brothers-in-arms actually try to run Silva out of town, despite the much-needed factory. There's trouble afoot....

Haunted by memories of the Civil War, Coy Jennings just wants to find work as a ranch hand and to begin saving for a small farm where he could finally enjoy peace and quiet. Arriving in the Texas settlement of Phantom Hill, Coy soon befriends a damaged but likable stable hand by the name of Ira Dalton and hopes for a future with a lovely widowed mother. In order to make the Hill a decent place to settle down, Coy must wage a new kind of war against ruthless ranch owner Lester Sinclair, his sadistic sons, and the murderous band of cattle rustlers who work for them.

Popular author Marcus Galloway continues the tradition of the legendary Ralph Compton with Outlaw’s Reckoning - a classic Western tale with an intriguing twist. Outlaws Gus McCord and Doyle Hill aren’t exactly model citizens, so when they happen upon the kidnapping of a shipping mogul’s daughter, every instinct in their thievin’ bones says to walk away. But this time is different, and the ruthless duo vow to do whatever it takes to save the girl.

Mississippi charmer Abner Mason is a professional gambler and a regular on the Delta Jack, a luxurious riverboat. But luck hasn't exactly been going Mason's way. After a disastrous loss at the tables, he owes an impossible debt to the most powerful man on the ship: mysterious, ruthless Cam Greeley. And Greeley's willing to do whatever it takes to get his fortune back - even threaten Mason's life. Now Mason has a single night to raise all the funds to pay off his debt by completing whatever ominous jobs Greeley has waiting for him. He just has to make it through alive....

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!

In this thrilling new installment in bestseller Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, Toby Bishop and the drovers of the Circle K ranch will have to battle the elements, wild animals, rough terrain, and dangerous people to get their longhorn herd to their destination. The drovers of Circle K ranch have to drive the herd of beautiful longhorn cattle 500 miles northwest to Missouri if they hope to make it through the next year. On the trail, drovers must set aside their differences in favor of a common goal.

Reporter Lester Booker joins legendary gunfighter Rance March on the trail of a dangerous outlaw to learn how the West was really won.

With a dream of building a ranching empire in Montana, Nelson Story sets off on one of the most extraordinary journeys in frontier history. By his side was a bunch of misfits and renegades-hard-fighting, war-bitten Texans with nothing left to lose. On his tail as the worst kind of enemy-brutal outlaws fixing to bleed his trail drive dry. Pushing his way through four harsh territories and three brutal seasons, Story would defy the Union Army, get a hold of a hundred Remingtons, and take on a thousand riled-up Sioux warriors, before he reached Virginia City....