Wayne D. Overholser

When Jett Cader comes home to an empty house, he knows that his wife has decided to take their young son away from their tough rural life in exchange for the city and better opportunities....

Small ranchers in Harmony, Oregon, are up against it with the price of cattle down and Skull Ranch, owned by a syndicate, trying to buy them out. Dan Riley spends a month trying to find a bank to help them, but he fails. When the editor of The Clarion is shot, the ranchers blame Black Mike...

This collection of stories includes: "The Woman from Cougar Creek" "The Price of Pride" "The Devil and Old Man Gillis" "Shooting for a Fall" "It's Hell to Be a Hero" "The Tongue-Tied Cowboy" "From Hell to Leadville" "The Deputy with a Past" "Judge Peterson's Colt Law" "The Breaking of Sam McKay"...

In the title story, Murdo Morgan left Paradise Valley 16 years ago, after his brothers had been killed at the hand of the Turkey Track outfit. One year later, his father died a broken and defeated man. Broad Clancy, owner of the Turkey Track, has remained the controlling force in this area of...

The volatile and dangerous Wild Bill Murphy has come to town with a group of settlers who have hired him to represent their interests....

Central Oregon is the last frontier, with transportation still by stagecoach and freight wagon. Now there's a movement afoot for a people's railroad....

Sam Cassidy comes home to find himself in a series of tense confrontations. His father expects Sam to work for him at the local bank, and Sheriff Ben Faraday, for whom Sam worked the previous summer as deputy, is suffering from a terminal disease and wants Sam to become a deputy again. "Black...

Finding out what really happened to Gunplay Maxwell was not easy. He was a bank and train robber known for the skill with which he pulled off every job. Yet, when one of those explosions in a baggage car left him hard of hearing and nearly blind ....

Neal Clark ramrod of the Circle C Ranch was in Cascade City to see the gunsmith when the Shelly gang attempted to hold up the bank....

Old Mike Varney is a callous, bad-tempered ranch owner of the Pitchfork Ranch, located near the Nevada Mesa during the second half of the 19th century. Bill Varney, his 23-year-old son, is often mistreated by his father; he is thinking about leaving the ranch and starting over somewhere else...

Dave Lowery lived in Gunlock, a dying western trail town, now an outlaw's haven. Sheriff Arno Slade, the power in town in cahoots with the judge, is suspected of killing Lowery's father....

A local merchant, Eli, holds most of the money and the power in the county. Then a stranger arrives and starts to court the merchant's daughter - and the problems begin....

The summer warpath began in late spring 1876 and was laid out under the command of General George Crook, perhaps the most experienced Indian fighter in the US Army at that time. Among other officers under Crook's command was the daring and resourceful Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer...

The Civil War seems far away from Four Corners in the Oregon Territory. Then two local men take opposing sides....

A Western trio of renegades, outlaws and the Alaskan gold rush days of the 1890s....

A young cowboy joins up with two other would-be bank robbers. The robbery succeeds but in getting away but only the cowboy comes away alive, much richer but not in any way he or anyone else had first expected....

Dave Cray and Gramps, after the end of the Civil War, moved east from Oregon to settle a new and bountiful territory. What they did, they did with their hands, but they had no money. Smiling Jim Sully opened a store there, and he had money but allowed the farmers to barter hay for goods....

Evil is as old as man. Dick Starr was exiled by his hellcat grandmother for not following her orders. Now, after an absence of one year, he is returning to his love, Lannie. Fearing that Dick's brother, Mike, would ambush and kill him, will Lannie be able to save Dick's life? Find out....