Résultats de "Ralph Compton" dans Toutes les catégories

When 25-year-old Lewis Taylor is released from the Texas State Prison, he receives little attention as he walks into the midday sunlight, free after serving five years for a crime he didn't commit. His only interest is in getting back to his hometown of Gila Bend, Texas, a quiet farming community about which he has only warm, idyllic memories. During his long years in prison, he survived by thinking fondly of the home he'd known since boyhood and of one special girl, Darla Winslow.

Fresh from a successful trail drive, cattle hand Seth Coe is feeling flush, especially after a lucky streak at the poker table. But his good fortune earns him a dangerous enemy, notorious tinhorn gambler Hannibal Fisher, who is none too happy about being cleaned out. The innocent Coe starts the long ride back to Texas with big plans to buy his own ranch. All he needs now, he figures, is a wife. To his amazement, in tiny Prairie Fire, Kansas he meets the perfect woman, his childhood love Josette Dubois.

Marshal John Beck was the law in the dangerous town of Mother Lode, Arizona. On his own, he'd managed to keep bandits, rustlers, and desperados at bay. It was a tough job for one man to handle, but he made it work...until the day Bram Hogan and his Brickhouse Gang got the drop on the lawman. They beat Beck to within an inch of his life and dropped him in the desert, where nothing but a slow, painful death awaited him. But the gang underestimated Beck. Even at his lowest point, he found a way to survive.

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.

Four men - Jess Donner, a Rebel and Southern gentleman; Steve Ellsworth, a ladies' man with a foul temper; Stu Wilkens, a Yankee; and Heck Myers, a teller of tall tales - find their friendship sorely tested by a dance-hall girl and a gang of outlaws.

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.

Brian Middleton left his father's ranch long ago to make his own way. But now, he's returned to claim the land his late father left him -- and learns the hard way that if you want to keep something in the wild West, you have to fight for it. With local lowlifes and shady con-men after the Dancing M ranch, Middleton has no choice but to make a stand....

Armed with only a Colt rifle, a Bowie knife, and courage as big as the West, Ten Chisholm—the bold, illegitimate son of frontier scout and plains ambassador Jesse Chisholm and a Cherokee woman—arrives in the heart of Comanche country with a price on his head. His only crime: loving the beautiful daughter of a powerful New Orleans gambler who has promised her to a wealthy man she hates.

With his hard-hitting Ralph Compton novels, Joseph A. West has laid claim to frequent spots on the USA Today best-seller list. In this thundering novel, Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Battles has been dispatched to infiltrate a band of ruthless gunfighters gathering in Slaughter Canyon. Battles would like to avoid bloodshed, but if push comes to shove, the deputy marshal has never been one to shy away from a fight.

Benton McCaleb and his band of bold-spirited cowboys traveled long and hard to drive thousands of ornery cattle into Wyoming's Sweetwater Valley. They're in the midst of setting up a ranch just north of Cheyenne when a ruthless railroad baron and his hired killers try to force them off the land. Now, with the help of the Shoshoni Indian tribe and a man named Buffalo Bill Cody, McCaleb and his men must vow to stand and fight. Outgunned and outmanned, they will wage the most ferocious battle of their lives—to win the right to call the land their own.

Parker Stanley's family had a dream: to start a new life in the Far West. But en route, a Cheyenne band slaughters his parents and abducts his sister. Then cowboy Clay Springer rides to the rescue - and comes up with an idea. He's got a team ready to deliver goods to the Mormons in Utah, but he's short on funds for supplies. He knows that Parker managed to hold on to his family's savings, so he suggests a 50-50 partnership. With a three-wagon, seven-man team, Parker and Clay will traverse the barren land, but out in the wilderness, Parker's sister needs saving - and he has vowed to find her.

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.

It's in the lawless Indian Territory that Daniel Strange meets his demise. Riding his chestnut mare to Texas to buy himself some cattle, the best gunsmith in St. Joseph, Missouri gets waylaid by a pack of murdering outlaws. His lifeless body is left dangling at the end of a rope - robbing his family of a loving husband and father.

A deeply divided nation. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands.... That was America in 1881. All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and 30 bullets later, three officers were wounded, and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Years ago Marshal Asher Thrall had shot mad-dog killer Ben Sharkey. And Sharkey has just repaid the favor in spades. With a bullet still in his chest, Ash knows he's a walking dead man. But he's going to make sure Sharkey is one step ahead of him.

Jerome Frederick Kincannon is a medicine man—an apothecary by trade and a healer at heart. But when his wife and young son are murdered by the notorious Benjamin Gang, his world crumbles around him. Kincannon can’t forgive the four Benjamin brothers for their transgressions, and he’ll never forget. His ambitions from that day forward are simple: kill them all.

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.

The people of Meridian, Colorado, live and die by coal mining, and when the railroad bypasses them, their livelihood is in peril. However, they discover that for a hefty sum of money they can create a spur line and save the town. A hefty sum the town does not have. Their only hope is former gambler Asa Newcombe. The townspeople pool their money so Newcombe can enter the big poker game in Golden Junction, and as much as he wants to leave his past life behind, the whole town is counting on him.

Big Jake Motley had been running the Big M spread in Texas for more than 30 years. In that time, he's driven thousands of head of cattle to market in Kansas. Now, while both the 19th century and the era of trail drives are coming to an end, Big Jake is determined to make one last drive to Kansas. The only thing is, he doesn't have the cowhands to move that much beef. He drafts his old friend, Chance McCandles, into service, and together, the two aging cowboys put together a crew.

Tom Navarro, a hostler at the Bar-V Ranch, has retired his gun-slinging boots to find peace of mind. As much as he enjoys working for Paul Vannorsdell, owner and operator of Bar-V, Navarro has plans of moving up north with the woman he loves to open his own ranch and create a new life for himself. Vannorsdell, too, has big dreams: he wants to buy the Rancho de Cava from an old friend, Don Francisco, so he can become one of the largest landholders in Southern Arizona. Everything seems to be going according to plan until Don Francisco is found dead by Bullet Creek.