Action Fiction Western

Louis L'Amour was the most decorated author in the history of American letters and a recipient of the Medal of Freedom. Now collected here in a single book are several of Louis L'Amour's finest Western stories the way Mr. L'Amour wrote them. At the time Louis L'Amour was writing, it was common practice for editors to rewrite the manuscript to fit certain publishing criteria. The text of The Strong Land has been restored, and the stories within it appear as Mr. L'Amour intended.

The little town of No-Name, Colorado is jubilant when they strike gold there, until every no-account degenerate and desperado for hundreds of miles shows up on their doorstep. It's up to mountain Man Smoke Jensen and his over-the-hill companions to save the town's bacon, and do their best not to get killed in the process.

A wagon train of pioneers is struggling Westward toward Oregon through the howling winter and a band of Arikara warriors are hot on their trail. Little do the Arikaras suspect that they're about to come face-to-face and gun-to-gun with a ferocious fight they never expected, courtesy of the wily mountain man called Preacher. As Preacher struggles to bring the settlers to safety, he learns the real reason they were attacked and begins to suspect that the secrets they've been keeping equal a worse kind of danger.

There are a million ways to die in the Rockies - and a million predators, natural or otherwise. But even a seasoned mountain dweller like Preacher is shocked by the latest horror lurking in the hills. Trappers are being hunted down like animals. Captured. Murdered. Mutilated. Their hearts carved out of their chests. Some of the victims were Preacher's friends. Now two others - Audie and Nighthawk - have gone missing. Preacher is determined to track them down before they end up on the chopping block. But nothing can prepare him for what's waiting at the end of the trail....

At the height of California's Gold Rush, men left everything behind for the chance at striking it rich. Now, some 30 years after its peak, gold fever still entices adventurous Easterners like James Macklin Chance, a poor Pennsylvanian who is drawn to California by the dream of lasting wealth - a dream so powerful he'll stop at nothing to see it through.

During a trip back east for a family reunion, Preacher learns that even the civilized Midwest can attract a motherlode of trouble...especially when a gang of local bully boys decide to pick a fight. Now wealthy landowner Elam Parks lies dead - and there's a $5,000 reward on the head of the man accused: the first mountain man. The fortune in blood money has dispatched a small army of bounty hunters after Preacher. Now, back in his once-peaceful homestead in the High Lonesome, as he sights down the barrel of his '33 Hall North breechloader, Preacher is ready for target practice.

Preacher and Hawk ride out of the Rockies and into St. Louis, loaded with furs. It’s Hawk’s first trip to civilization and the moment he lays eyes on young Chessie Dayton, he’s lost in more ways than one. When Chessie unwisely signs on for a gold-hungry expedition into the lawless mountains, Hawk convinces Preacher to trail the outfit because they’re all headed straight to the sacred Indian grounds known as the Black Hills — a land of no return. To come out of it alive a lot of people will have to die.

From his Missouri farm, the boy traveled west. In his hand was a Navy Colt given to him by Jesse James. By his side was the old mountain man named Preacher, who would teach young Smoke Jensen everything he needed to fight like the devil and die like a man. And in his heart...was vengeance. His enemies destroyed everything he'd ever loved. But they made one mistake. They let Smoke Jensen live.

For the first time, an epic account of a boy born into a struggle for survival on the harsh and unforgiving American frontier, the story behind the legend of Smoke Jensen.... On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war.

In the days of the frontier West, it was not unusual for desperadoes and fugitives from justice to seemingly disappear from the face of the earth. Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time, is the story of one such man who returned to reestablish himself in a law-abiding society. In Texas, young bank robber Wade Holden, once the toughest, fastest trigger man in the notorious Simm Bell gang, makes a promise to his dying mentor that he will go straight. But with the Rangers on his tail, he struggles to find sanctuary.

Robber baron Clifton Satterlee's plan is twofold and simple: Wrest the timber-thick hills in New Mexico Territory from the Tua Pueblo and then populate the town with his own subservient labor force. But in his near-perfect campaign of terror, Satterlee has overlooked one mighty obstacle: Smoke Jensen.

Smoke Jensen sat in a cave and boiled the last of his coffee. He figured he was in Idaho — somewhere south of Montpelier — but he was certain about only two things: He was cold and he was being hunted by a small army of men. Smoke knew why he was cold — it was winter. He just didn't have a clear idea of why anyone was after him.

In Phoenix, a sheriff guns down a banker and robs him of a document. Going to the banker's aid, a witness hears the dying man's last words and takes hold of the map the sheriff was really after. By the time the crooked lawman realizes he has the wrong document, Jolene Wellington is on the run - and framed for the murder of the banker.

When Frank Morgan gets to a town called Los Angeles, he can see the forces gathering around him. For the Spanish landowners, wealth is measured in cattle on the open range. For hard nosed oilmen, a fortune is in the ground - in the form of shining black crude oil.... When blood is spilled on the sun-seared land, Morgan allies himself with a beautiful, widowed rancher - even as he cuts a deal with an ambitious wildcatter. Morgan is not trying out treachery.

If anyone can smell an investment opportunity, it's railroad men and big city bankers. They're not the kind of folks that Sheriff Mackey is used to dealing with. But greed is greed, and if anyone knows how money can drive men to murder, it's the sheriff of a boomtown like Dover Station. But when Mackey is forced to gun down a pair of saloon rats, it brings a powderkeg of trouble - with a quick-burning fuse of vengeance named Alexander Duramont. This bloodthirsty psychopath wants to kill the sheriff for killing his buddies.

What the vicious Utah Jack Grubbs would really kill for just rode into town: Smoke Jensen...and a small fortune in rawhide. As if that wasn't trouble enough, Chief Iron Claw's bloodthirsty Cheyenne warriors have just appeared on the horizon. It isn't long before a war between the white man's greed and the red man's savagery turns the peaceful Bighorn Mountains into a simmering powder keg...and Smoke Jensen is just the man to set off the explosion.

Crater City, New Mexico, is a bustling mining town brimming with the stench of men hungry to get rich the old fashioned way - killing the competition. Dennis Conroy is the owner of the biggest saloon in town, and he needs a few good sharpshooters to help protect surveyors laying out a route for a spur rail lie before his rival Hugh Thornton beats him to it. Jo Buckhorn’s handy with a gun so he takes the job.

Smoke Jensen couldn't have cared less about a range war that had erupted in far-off Montana. But when his cousin Fae is stuck right in the middle of the hundred-gun showdown that's exploding in bullets and blood, he rides to intercede in the name of family. He's joined on his mission by the Moab Kid and legendary gunfighters Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.

Once every year, Perley Gates and his brothers lead the Triple-G crew on its annual cattle drive. It's a treacherous journey along the Great Western Trail, with a herd of 2,000 cows on one side and many opportunities for trouble on the other. This year, trouble shows up in the form of a beautiful young woman, her little baby, and her bizarre traveling companion - a colorful old cuss who goes by the name of Possom Smith. They're heading to a settlement called Butcher Bottom, and risking their necks to get there. Perley offers to escort the trio to their destination.

In a town like Chugwater, Wyoming, you know who your friends are, who your enemies are, and who your kill-crazy maniacs are. For Duff MacCallister, the last category belongs to Johnny Taylor and his gang. Duff has wrestled with this polecat before, and knows that his bite is worse than his smell. But when Taylor's gang tries to rob a bank - and Duff manages to shoot one and arrest Taylor's brother - the outraged outlaw raises a stink straight out of hell. First, he begins to randomly slaughter innocent townsfolk one by one.