Evans Novel of the West – serie

Henry Logan rides with a mission when he arrives in the border town of Nogales, Arizona Territory: Skiptracing the location of wealthy rancher Richard I. Parrish. Trust checks in his name have been faithfully cashed each month, but Richard has stopped responding to letters from his attorney. Henry is sent to find Parrish—dead or alive. A straightforward task; that is until Henry is mistaken for a famous gunslinger and falls under the feverish influence of the malaria he contracted in Cuba. Furthermore, his number one suspect is Parrish’s wife, and the most alluring woman Henry has ever encountered. As his fever mounts, the lines blur between good and bad, friend and foe; and he must dig deep to prevail against the enemies that threaten his deep-seated ideals.

Lee Strate has been shot and left for dead by two men who stole every penny of his $5000 fortune. His life is saved by Jack, a freed black man who agrees to help him track down his money. Heading to Galveston, they discover the thieves are working for the powerful Colonel Benson. Lee and Jack discover that Colonel Benson is involved in agitating racial tension among Galveston’s dock workers, the Cotton Jammers. Telling the white workers that the blacks are trying to take over, and telling the blacks that the whites are taking unfair advantage of them, Benson has worked both parties into a frenzy. The unrest is likely to come to a head just when President Grant is due in town.The hunt for the thieves becomes deadly, and Lee and Jack begin to realize the shattering implications of the sinister political plot that has enmeshed them all.

Lizzie Randall, the preacher’s pretty daughter, has been discovered brutally murdered. The young Mexican boy Paco Morales is found close to the scene making him a convenient scapegoat to hang for the heinous crime. When the town drunkard Willie Turner claims that Morales is innocent, Sheriff Ward Vincent is forced to investigate the heinous crime more closely. As his investigation progresses, the dark underbelly of the small western town is exposed, and the guilty seem to outnumber the innocent.

Ray Storey left Kansas for one reason: revenge. Assuming the role of Kit Carson in a Medicine Show that travels to small towns around East Texas, he hunts down Sam Hawkins, the brutal murderer of Storey's innocent younger brother. As Ray finally arrives in the same town as his quarry, he is faced with the harsh reality that he might not have the wit or courage to bring the cruel Hawkins brothers to justice. When a man is killed and a woman kidnapped, Storey must throw away his act and shoot with real bullets, or his own life and honor will be forfeit.

When Ryan came riding back into Tularosa people gawped in disbelief. The power-players in town wanted him out of town—whether by horse or by casket. His old friends welcomed him, but their faces were shadowed with doubt and hard questions. Why could he make it back to town to see his sister’s killer hang when he couldn’t be bothered to stay and support her against the treacherous Kane brothers when she was still alive?It doesn’t take Ryan long to realize that Billy Kane, who stands to hang, is not his sister’s killer. He focuses his attention on the men who first ran him out of town, certain that they know the killer’s identity. No matter how long it takes, Ryan is determined to avenge his sister’s death and bring her murderer to justice. This time he’s not going to allow the powerful forces that control most everything in Tularosa hide the truth.

War had killed ‘Glint’ McClain’s taste for gunfighting. Perhaps that is why a young hardcase could best the famous gunman and leave him for dead on the parched ground of the Arizona desert. Father Miguel finds McClain and nurses him back to health. To repay this kindness, McClain agrees to fight off the Lathrops, local mine owners who are enslaving the Indians in Miguel’s parish. Yet despite his Good Samaritan ways, the townspeople want Father Miguel dead—he brings nothing but trouble, they say. And now, the Indians fear him too. Is Father Miguel a man of God or Father Diablo, a lying cheating scoundrel? McClain must take the measure of his savior, before he can take aim at the true enemy.

Former policeman Jay McGraw’s job as a messenger for Wells Fargo takes him east on the San Francisco to Chicago run of the Central Pacific. While often routine and boring, guarding the famous Wells Fargo treasure box is a steady job. Rarely does he envy his close friends who still walk a beat in Chinatown.But trouble soon comes his way. Not long into the run, a gang of masked bandits blow up a key bridge on the trail. Jay knows they are after his cargo, even though the train carries other valuable freight. If Wells Fargo loses their heavily insured shipment, Jay will lose his job. However, escaping from the heavily armed, very persistent riders seems impossible.A last-ditch escape effort sees Jay fleeing the bandits by hot-air balloon, only to land in the midst of a deadly range war between cattlemen and Basque sheepherders deep in the Wyoming territory. Despite Jay’s remote location, the bandits continue their dogged pursuit of him, and seem willing to risk anything to steal the precious lockbox.

At the end of the War Between the States, great numbers of rootless, exhausted men and women set out to try and rebuild their lives in the unmapped, untamed freedom of the Great Plains. Noble McCurtain had been sickened by the slaughter of the war—he deserted, seeking a place where he could live in peace. Fleta Corey had waited years for her husband to return from the war, trying desperately to keep herself and her little boy alive. Noble chanced by their cabin just in time to save them from a murderous band of raiders, and they decided to join forces and head west…There, on the Santa Fe Trail, they would find not the peace they were seeking, but danger and death, and love and hope.

For the life of me, I don't see how anybody in his right mind would want a berth on a busted down wreck like the Jessie Bill. But then there ain't many people on the Jessie Bill in their right minds [...]My name is Peter Paul Sherman and I'm mud clerk on the Jessie Bill. Flunky might be a better word for it. I'm 17 and if I can live through one more season on this leaky old tub, I'll put in for a job on some respectable boat...And so begins the wonderful adventures of Mr. Peter Paul Sherman. It's the kind of story that the incomparable Mr. Samuel Clemens would have recognized in a flash. Peter Sherman's lively and hilarious account of this travels up and down the mighty Mississippi will delight every family that appreciates the wonderful history and unique characters that make up our rich American heritage.Where else could you find battles with river pirates, riots caused by floating Shakespearean acting troupes, picnics that turn into brawls...and it's all true.More or less.

When his father dies and the family scatters, Erastus (‘Rat’) Hadley hires on as a hand to a local farmer. Rat is abused and tortured in his new home, but a depression is on and it’s a tough time for a young man to be on his own. When Rat’s loyal childhood friend Mitch Morris intervenes and the sheriff rescues Rat, his luck changes.Landing a job at last, Rat rides shotgun for the Western Stage Company out of Fort Worth. He quickly picks up a reputation as a crack shot, and as business increases, Rat is able to save towards the small ranch he’d always dreamed of.His steady routine is interrupted when the hero of his childhood, Sheriff Cathcart, asks him to become his deputy. Rat’s first duty as deputy is to track down the Oxenberg gang, one of the deadliest groups of bandits in all of Texas. When he draws close to his quarry, Rat is faced with one of the toughest lessons of his life: friendship and old loyalties don’t always square with justice and the law.

Mastincala, the Rabbit Boy, is born in a tumultuous and uncertain time for his people, the Lakota. He is but a boy when his father is killed during the clash between the Lakota and Colonel Harney’s army at Rosebud, and he vows to avenge his father’s death. Mastincala joins Crazy Horse and the Oglala on their rides against the Crow, fighting against the encroachment and overhunting of Big Horn country. He earns the name Tacante, Buffalo Heart, for his courage during one particularly fierce battle, and sheds his softer boyhood persona. When gold is discovered in the sacred Black Hills, a series of unstoppable events is set in motion—culminating in the bloody massacre at Little Big Horn. In the midst of the turmoil, Mastincala must decide how to forge a future for his family while defending the honor and tradition of his ancestors.Lakota vividly details the struggle of the Lakota people against the white man for control of their hunting grounds, and offers a moving, bittersweet portrait of the period that marked the end of a way of life for the Plains Sioux.

Pinto Lowery never wanted anything more than the chance to raise a family and find a piece of land he could call his own. But after fighting in the Civil War, he couldn’t settle, and instead drifted all over the West breaking mustangs, haunted by the ghosts of his fallen comrades. All that changed in a flash.There didn’t seem to be a good reason to leave mustanging to go work on the farm of Mister Tully Oakes while Oakes travels north on a cattle drive. The man had a reputation for being stingy, ornery and contrary. But when Pinto met Elsie Oakes and her young children, an old yearning stirs in his heart and Pinto decided to take Tully’s offer,Time goes by quickly when the work is hard. Yet, while the corn is being harvested and everyone is around the fire at night, Pinto can almost fool himself into believing he’s found a loving family, and the first secure home he’s known since boyhood.But the day of Tully’s return looms and the Hannigan gang has taken to raiding the local ranches—imperiling Pinto Lowery’s simple dreams of the future.

Eight years ago, forty-year-old Caulfield Blake was run out of the West Texas town of Simpson by a lynch mob. As sheriff, he’d been called on to carry out justice. But the War was ending and upholding the law was a tough kind of business. And when it meant hanging ‘Colonel’ Henry Simpson’s son for killing an unpopular federal judge, the community—including Blake’s own wife and children—wanted no part of him.Now Colonel Simpson wants to expand his spread and force out his neighbors, so he blocks up Carpenter Creek and dries up the already barren soil. There’s only one man who will stand up to the powerful Colonel Simpson and he’s been making a good living for himself rounding up mustangs by the Brazos River. But when Caulfield Blake gets an urgent letter from his remarried ex-wife, he listens to his heart, and not to his sense, and heads back home.

Jennifer Vandermeer hated Kansas. With all her heart, she wished that she’d never left the dull security of Ohio, had never let her husband, Walter, take her from the order and civilization of the East.There was no preacher in Four Corners, Kansas, so Seth Baker, at the behest of his wife, improvised the words. Jennifer, her two young children, and a small group of strangers, listened as they clustered in a spot freshly scythed around the rectangular pit. Walter had not been long among us before he was taken away, but, uh, he was a good, uh, farmer and a good, uh, man…It just didn’t make sense. Jennifer had told Walter over and over: “It’s ludicrous, neither of us know the first thing about farming.” But Walter had been adamant, and they came to Kansas.Now Walter was dead. And Jennifer was marooned in a sea of grass with a farm to take care of and two small children to raise. Where would she go? What would she do?It would be harder than she ever imagined. As she stood over her husband’s fresh grave she couldn’t know that her life would become a war every day. War against the elements, war against the will of the land, and most of all, a war, every minute of every day, against herself and her fears…For every glorious legend of the Old West there are a thousand workaday stories of the boundless persistence and courage that turned a wilderness into civilization. Jennifer Vandermeer and the story of her hardship, disasters and triumphs, is one of the real stories of how the West was won.

Johnny Montana was tall and dark, and sport a thin, neatly trimmed mustache and he had midnight black eyes. He was particular about his person; he shaved regular and put rosewater in his hair and preferred clean shirts when he could get them…Johnny Montana was the kind of man who made things happen.“You planning on sticking around these parts for the rest of your days?” That question completely changed Katie Swensen’s life….She knew in an instant that her answer would be ‘no’ if Johnny Montana was asking her to go away with him. They left in the late hours of a warm evening, her daddy snoring in the other room. Johnny Montana was the handsomest man she’d ever met. It wasn’t until a few days later that she learned he was also a gambler, a road agent and a killer.Henry Dollar was a man that knew horses and knew how to ride them, and he knew guns and how to use them. He’d been tested by gunfire in the sixteen years he’d spent with the D Company of the Texas Rangers. Henry Dollar never shirked his duty, he never backed down, and he never took what wasn’t his…but then, he just hadn’t been tempted enough, yet.Eli Stagg was a hard, cruel, friendless man with a talent for hunting, tracking and killing. The family of William F. Gray, the late Senator of Arkansas, engaged Stagg to find and kill the man who shot the Senator and left him to die in the dust of the road…Pete Winter, a young lawman, was asked to escort two prisoners across Indian Territory to the court of ‘Hanging Judge’ Parker…In this rich and complex novel of the Great American Frontier, these characters cross paths and raise arms as they each seek their individual destinies and desires—some will emerge victorious while others will be defeated by harsh climes and hardened men.

Back in the winter of ’77 I was deputying up in Two Scalp, Dakota Territory; waiting for my friend Clete Shannon—who was the Sheriff there at the time—to say the word for us to quit our jobs and head south…Being Clete’s deputy give me mighty little to do but think things over, morning or night. Two Scalp’s deader’n a sucker in a sandstorm.This lazy peace would not last.Willie Goodwin had seen a lot of life; he knew how the death wind could blow into a man’s life on a clear sunny day without a sip of warning. He thought he knew how treacherous life could be…that’s why he drank.When Nell Larson complained that someone was spooking her cattle late at night, neither Willie nor Clete recognized the danger….When Nell’s cabin was burned and Nell murdered, and when Clete was shot by the same faceless enemy, Willie saddled his horse and went looking for justice and for the answer to the puzzle of why these horrible crimes were committed.Willie’s manhunt would become an odyssey of death and vengeance. It would stretch over mountains, rivers and plains; it would take him through towns, ranches and farms. Along the way, Willie Goodwin would have to decide if friendship was stronger than honor or desire. Willie Goodwin was a simple man with some hard choices…

Peter D. Buckow hadn’t had much luck in his short life. An abused and neglected child, he struggled hard to overcome the disadvantages of his upbringing. He worked hard as Henry Blough’s ranch hand; he labored from sunup ‘til sundown; he never shirked a task. But when Henry Blough tries to cheat the sixteen-year-old Buck of his pay, he decides to take his wages out in steers…Caught red handed by the deputy Sheriff, poor Peter Buckow is hanged with his own rope and left for dead.Except Buckow didn’t die.He survived and was given an extraordinary chance at a second life. And now he had to choose between the easy path of violence and vengeance, or a life of honest hard work with no guarantee of success.

When a federal penitentiary, ‘Hellhole,’ was built in Yuma, the native Quechans discovered a way in which they could succeed in the world of the white man; they put their uncanny tracking abilities to use catching and returning prison fugitives. Immune to the searing heat, cunning, and tenacious, the Indians moved like wraiths pursuing dangerous criminals. Of all the Quechans, perhaps the greatest tracker was Ho-Nas Good. He was tall and powerfully strong, and in his youth, saw nothing wrong in aiding the white man. He dreamed of wealth and saw that even an Indian could do much in the white man’s world—if he had money.Honas prospered; he was happy with his land, his wealth, and his pretty young wire. Until the day that three of Yuma’s toughest prisoners escaped the territorial prison and brutally raped and murdered his wife. When they were caught, the bigoted judge added a paltry few years to their sentences.Honas changed. He became as a new man. A man charged with hate; a man powered by the overwhelming desire for revenge. Honas put his whole life and his considerable skills in the service of his revenge. And the terror came to Hellhole.

It was a lonely life the Wolfer led. He ate when he felt hungry, drank as he wanted, and slept where he fell. It hadn’t always been that way…Once there had been a cabin filled with the warmth of Katie’s smile, a bright flower that touched every corner of his life with love…that was all gone now. He’d left her one furious winter’s night, and when he’d returned, Katie lay in the snow outside their cabin, dead, surrounded by wolf tracks.Roan McCrae had been taking his revenge on wolves ever since. Soon, however, he learns that the wolf isn’t the real scourge of the land. That epithet belongs to Azle Steppe and his men. A powerful man, Azle Steppe’s greed knows few limitations. When he decides to take over the valley, Roan McCrae is the first one he’ll burn out and run off.And then the Wolfer will become the Wolf..and the Hunter will become the Hunted.

When recent Harvard graduate George Tanner returns home to Tahlequah in the Cherokee nation, he finds the town bustling and accommodations scarce. The council is in session and everyone is in town.Captain Go-Ahead Rider, the district sheriff, offers Tanner immediate employment as a deputy. Rider senses trouble as some key issues come up for vote before the Council. The big issue—and the most controversial one—is whether the railroad should be allowed to come into town.Mix Hail, the swing vote on the issue, suddenly disappears, and Tanner finds himself smack in the middle of big-money politics and his own nation’s concerns. As the two lawmen sort through a pile of blackmail, revenge, and bootlegging, they uncover a nasty plot by some of the town’s leading citizens. Tanner learns how to be a lawman, while at the same time experiencing the joy of being home, in his own land, with his own people, speaking his own language.

For many years Oliver Colfax worked as a hired killer. But after he developed a friendship with one of his targets, Colfax lost heart in that line of work and quit. A few odd jobs keep body and soul together, but until Colfax decides what to do with the rest of his life, he’s content sitting in his St. Louis hotel room and drinking fine whiskey.When a rancher from Colorado asks him to deal with some cattle rustlers, Colfax declines, thinking it is just one more case of a big landowner wanting it all. But when Colfax learns that a production of Titus Andronicus is playing in nearby Pullman, Colorado, he has a change of heart. He has always longed to see someone play Titus.Dealing with the cattle rustlers proves to be a routine job, but investigating the tragedy that hits the touring Shakespearean drama troupe turns out to be a tough assignment. It may be the hardest case he’s ever taken on, one that is certain to change his life forever.

The tinkling of guitars in the moonlight; the softly hummed words of a Spanish love song; the sweet, liquid music of the bells in the mission San Carlos De Carmelo; fleeting pictures of old Father Junipero Serro—these and a hundred other rich memories flood the mind as one unfolds the story of little Suzanna, a peon girl, poor, futureless at a time when the Dons and the grandsons of the conquistadores were supreme in California.You think of Ramona; the dust covered stretches of El Camino Real—the King’s Highway—appear before your eyes; you hear the roaring of quaint, old-fashioned, muzzleloading guns, the clash of cold steel; subconsciously you thrill to the deeds of valor, of sacrifice and danger. You are in step with romance and adventure when it was in its heyday in Old California.Red-lipped, smoky-eyed senoritas smile on you; your nostrils dilate with ungent aromas of hot, golden brown tortillas, or fragrant, steaming tamales; for you the clock has been turned back a hundred years—you walk in a land that is gone, but in which fate played as recklessly with the lives of men and women as it does in our own world today.

This was the climax; the end of a lifetime of bitterness and hate—Rusty Maxwell and Ben Sharp, both grown old, grizzled, and rich; one the owner of a barbed-wire empire, a sea of grass larger than some Eastern states; the other risen to great political power, ruthlessly scheming to break the man with whom he had clashed ever since both had driven their longhorn herds over the trail to Dodge.To cut that empire in two, to bring its over-lord to his knees, had long been Ben Sharp’s purpose. And in the South Western Pacific Railroad he found a weapon admirably forged to accomplish this end. But Rusty Maxwell, for all his years, had not forgotten how to fight; nor had Lance Kincaid, the fledgling eagle he had reared, if not sired.Here is the last-stand fight between the valiant Old West, bred to the plains and the saddle, fearless, a six-shooter the tool of its trade; and the raw, dollar-driven progress of the New. Lance Kincaid was certain of his position, the issues clear-cut in his mind, until proud, smiling Valerie Pickett reached the end-of-steel in her father’s construction car.In a novel that catches the soul of the windswept plains, Will Ermine has painted a canvas of historic action and drama which far exceeds the dimensions and depth of the usual cowboy story. Its tense, gripping reality strikes a singular note in Western fiction.

Reb Santee was his name. He appeared to be just a rough-and-tumble cowboy, with an unruly shock of flaxen hair, and a puckered frown in his laughing blue eyes. But when he first rode into Wind River Basin, the law already had a grudge against him—and the grudges multiplied in a hurry, all because he wanted to be honest.In self-defense, he made a chain store business of outlawry. Brown’s Park, over the line in Colorado; the Robbers’ Roost, down in the purple wastes of Utah; the Hole-in-the-Wall; the Lost Cabin wilderness—he made them way stations on the outlaw trail, where men on the dodge could get grub, fresh horses, and information. Rustling became organized; banks and railroads began to feel the sting of their activities. The notorious “Wild Bunch” was blazing a wide trail up and down Wyoming.Stockmen organized; posses scoured the range; guns roared in dark canyons. But no one suspected Reb Santee, everybody’s friend and the best-liked man in the Basin, until one fateful day…Thrills, excitement, romance, and the best assortment of laughs you ever had in a Western story.

After many years on the range, a cool fighter who calls himself Idaho rides back to the country where he was raised. Unrecognized by the friends and foes of his childhood, Idaho finds himself in the midst of a roaring scrap between two proud ranchmen and he finds his loyalty split on both sides of the feud. A quick shooter but a quicker thinker, a leader and fighter who never reckons his own safety, Idaho aims to restore justice and peace to the warring ranches. His resolve to win the respect of a father who abandoned him, his desire to protect his greatest benefactor, and his yearning to secure the love of his childhood friend Nancy, force him in the center of the conflict, even as he wrestles with his own inner turmoil.Even as Idaho struggles to determine where to stand in the conflict, he stands up against crookedness and foul play from all sides! His shrewd plans for recapturing fence wire and a stolen stream, his hair-trigger action to save lives in tough spots, his fairness and human sympathy—it is his courage and calm in hot situations that prove him a hero fit to make the cattle country proud. In the midst of battle blazing with six-guns, rifles, dynamite, fire, and the whole arsenal of hatred and violence, Idaho’s divided allegiance may be the only thing that can save the clashing ranchers from each other—and from themselves.

It makes a lot of difference who is the sheriff in the town of Lariat. When Grubb was sheriff, Kurt Dodd and his men ran wild. Cattle rustling was a business to them, and they went about it in a business-like fashion.  Save for the valor and alertness of Bob Lee and his Texas men, they’d have wiped out the whole Tomlinson outfit.When Bob Lee becomes sheriff, the war on the rustlers begins in earnest. Bob is elected to the tune of barking six-guns, and after his election the gunfire only increases, as Kurt Dodd’s gang try to drop him dead. In the fights for his life and for the safety of cattlemen, the only man Bob wants at his back is Dick Markley. Dick chooses a job that offers better money than sheriff’s deputy, improving his chances to win the hand of one Miss June Tomlinson, leaving Bob to fight off Dodd’s men without his help.  Bob is faced with some difficult decisions: between love and friendship, friendship and his job, his life and his personal sense of justice; Bob will make choices that’ll forever alter his destiny.

Barry Weston loves Barbara Dawn, whose father’s ranch, the Cinchbuckle, is one of the largest in the West. When Steve Moley, a philanderer and the son of the Judge Moley, begins paying attention to her, Barry takes a stand and warns Steve away from the innocent Barbara. Steve doesn’t take kindly to Barry’s meddlin’, and the two begin a scuffle that ends with Barry giving Steve a taste of some lead medicine. Barry knows he can’t expect justice after shooting the son of Judge Moley, and goes into hiding on the plains, wanted by both posses and outlaws.Barry’s exile transforms him from a wild, gangly kid into an upstanding, broad-shouldered man. Upon his return to his hometown, he finds the family ranch run-down and dilapidated and Judge Moley buying up all the spreads in the valley. Barry yearns to right all the wrongs that have been committed in his absence, but he must test the mettle of his skills against the money and machinations of the Moleys.

Wyoming’s free range is in peril. The free rangers, led by the Catlin brothers, are accustomed to letting their cattle roam where the grass is green and water easy to come by. When they first spot the barbed wire barricades, blocking the herds’ progress to the river, they are incensed. Tempers flare, bullets fly, and soon it’s an all-out range war between the cattle barons and the little free-range outfits.San Saba Lee, foreman of the prosperous Tincup Ranch, finds himself in a tough spot when his boss decides to erect barbed-wire fences on the Tincup spread. He admires the Catlin brothers, and he carries a torch for their beautiful and brave sister Rhoda, but he needs to keep his position as foreman in order to make amends for a past mistake. Lee finds himself torn between his heart and his sense of duty, desperate to forge an agreement to stop the flying bullets from stealing the life of another one of his friends.