Western Law

Here are 16 stories, where good meets bad, and everything in between, from the legendary author of the West, Elmer Kelton. Law of the Land chronicles some of his most exciting and dangerous tales of the Old West, collected together for the first time - including the exciting first publication of a never-before published Kelton story, “Biscuits for Bandit”.

It started with a slaughter and ended with a massacre, and by the finish of it, Sam Judge and Matt Dury had seen enough bloodshed to last them a lifetime. But the gun-fast men from Texas had signed on to help an army officer get his little girl back from the Apache renegades who’d kidnapped her, and once they gave their word, nothing would stop them from seeing a job through.

When San Antonio FBI agent Garon Grier buys a ranch in Jacobsville, Texas, the strong, silent loner is hoping to mend some broken family fences. He is not looking for love when he finds an unexpected, unwanted attraction to the girl next door, a shy, lovely woman who believes some secrets are best kept hidden. But the truth will prove just as dangerous when Garon tackles the most difficult case of his career: hunting an escaped convict, a child predator whose former victims are all dead. All except one.

Graham's Resolution continues with the sixth installment, The Wild West, and this time arrows fly. Graham Morgan's brief respite is over when he realizes surviving a decade after a devastating pandemic continues. But now it's not his own life threatened; it's the next generation's existence he has to protect from an enemy that just won't quit. With the aid of a peaceful society, the script flips, but will it be enough to save them all from a relentless enemy?

Shad Marone is hunted across the desert by a posse and vengeful sheriff who falsely accuse him of murder and intend to kill him without a trial.

While portraying life in a new settlement on New York's Lake Otsego in the final years of the 18th century, Cooper deftly explores the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of the American experience. He contrasts the natural codes of the hunter and woodsman, Natty Bumppo, and his Indian friend John Mokegan with the more rigid structure of law required by a more complex society.

In "Law of the Desert", Shad Marone is on the run. He shot a man in a fair fight, but the sheriff is his bitter enemy, and Shad knows he'll never get a fair trial.

In "Desert Death Song", Nat Bodine is given a choice: to die by hanging or take his chances in the desert. But when a good woman believes in a man, he finds the will to survive.

Blowing into Kindred, New Mexico, like a sandstorm, mercenary Sherman ''The Teacher'' Dahl quickly locates his prey and guns them down in a blazing firefight. But Dahl's troubles are only just beginning. The town's power-hungry marshal doesn't take kindly to Dahl's brand of justice and he's determined to end the hired killer's career once and for all.

Life is hard in the Old West—but so is Cullen Murphy. Orphaned as a child, he drifted from town to town across a merciless frontier, taking any job he could. Ranch hand, cattle driver, Confederate soldier. Whatever it took, he was up for the task. But when the Civil War ended, Murphy was ready to settle down and start his own ranch in Newtown, Texas, a beautiful but untamed stretch of land with no marshal, no jailhouse—and no defense against trigger-happy lowlifes.

A bushwhacked Wild West-show entrepreneur must prove he's no mere dime-novel hero. Either that, or lose everything he holds dear. Cimarron Jack Wheatley is just wrapping up a tremendously successful first tour with his very own, highly acclaimed "Real Wild West Extravaganza". It is when his show is stricken by a rapid succession of oddly coincidental setbacks - injuries, formerly satisfied troupe members suddenly quitting, and then a catastrophic train wreck.

Orphaned as a child, Cullen Murphy battled against life's cruelties as he drifted from one unforgiving frontier town to the next. A hired hand at saloons and ranches, he was aimless until he met a drover who taught him to drive cattle, and inspired him to build a spread of his own on the San Saba River just outside of the small town of Newtown. Then the war came and Cullen spent four years wearing Confederate gray, earning the rank of sergeant. Caught up in the viciousness and bloodshed, he became a hardened soldier—and a merciless killer.

Mob rule had taken over the border town of Whetstone, New Mexico. Black-hooded vigilantes were stringing up those they considered to be "undesirables" for even the pettiest of crimes. Someone somewhere had to bring peace back to the beleaguered town - but who in hell was it going to be?

Samuel Moses Cardiff had a plan. He would graduate from the Teachers College in Albany, secure himself a position as a school master and ask his long-time girlfriend to marry him. He had a plan and just one thing stood in his way, the Civil War. Samuel graduated college the summer Fort Sumter was fired upon and he returned home in time to be enlisted into the 42nd New York Infantry Regiment. His life was put on hold.

All Alpine's marshal, Boyd Cooper, wants is a nice retirement, not to get a posse together to track outlaws. However, when an altercation leads to the exchange of gunfire and the spilling of outlaw blood, he doesn't have much of a choice. The outlaws fear their reputation might be at stake, so they declare revenge on the tin stars of Alpine. They're mad enough to break their own no-kill rule, and Boyd Cooper knows things could end as bloody as they started.

Nebraska, 1876. The western frontier is wild and needs a lawman who can tame it. Joe Mundy is such a man. A veteran of the Civil War and Indian wars, he once wore a badge in the booming cattle town of Baxter Springs, Kansas. A deadly gunfight with a prominent rancher costs him that badge. He finds his next job enforcing the law in Taylorsville, a new town in the sandhills of Nebraska.

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 choice was simple. Sam Lockwood and his fellow Confederate prisoners of war could spend the rest of their days in a Union prison camp, or they could go west to bring law and order back to the wilds of Arizona as "Galvanized Yankees". They chose to ride west, and sure enough, what they found when they got there was a land turned lawless. Apaches were on the warpath and a gang of marauding Mexican bandidos was cutting up rough.

Diggett Monroe's gang of outlaws wants to take over the town of Endurance, Idaho. To this end, they ambush Sheriff Pelham Birdsall, leaving him for dead. But Birdsall, thanks to his young wife Delight, doesn't die, and as she strives to get him back on his feet in time for the inevitable showdown, more and more of the sheriff's duties fall on her shoulders. In this, she is assisted by an unlikely deputy and a three-legged dog, but in the end, it takes all of them to vanquish the outlaws.

When Janelle Prescott is thrown from her car as it careens off a slippery road, she expects to wake up in a hospital. Instead, to her utter disbelief, she wakes up in a jail cell that looks like something from an old Western movie set. It is there, hurt and alone, with no idea what happened or how she will get back home, that Janelle first meets Aaron Jackson. As she regains her wits, however, Janelle realizes something is terribly amiss, and her worst fears are confirmed when she learns Aaron is the marshal of Cheyenne County, Wyoming...and the year is 1878.

Rebecca Joan Thacker had just celebrated her 11th birthday when word was received that her father had been killed in the Civil War. She was barely 13 when two bushwhackers dragged her into the barn on the family farm and raped her. The month before her 14th birthday she gave birth to a baby girl. A month prior to her 15th birthday, Becky’s mother died, leaving her all alone to raise a child.