Showing results by author "Louis L'Amour" in All Categories

"The Road to Casas Piedras": In the midst of a lively country dance, gunshots ring out at the stagecoach station and Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie finds the station's master sprawled in a pool of his own blood. "More Brains Than Bullets":Banker Tom Lindsay made a bad decision when he decided to do business with Ross Yerby. Yerby convinced Tom to print a few extra greenbacks to help him trade some cattle in exchange for half the profit. "West of Dodge": Where the real frontier begins... A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt....

Tom Kedrick is hired by a financial syndicate to run off a gang of vagrants and outlaws who are occupying a sizable strip of land that the syndicate has filed, claiming it is unusable swamp. To Kedrick's dismay, these "vagrants and outlaws" turn out to be hard working ranchers and farmers who have improved the lands they have claimed and are determined to resist any effort to disenfranchise them.

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it." This volume presents nine of L'Amour's ever-popular short stories - history that lives forever.

A collection of classic Western tales including From Missouri by Zane Grey, Over the Northern Border by Max Brand and Riders of the Dawn by Louis L'Amour.

"Killer from the Pecos": Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie rides into the wild town of Almagre trailing a Pecos bank robber who has left two men dead. "Lit a Shuck for Texas": Johnny Buck is a young Texas cowboy working for the Bar W. In the process of roping an old stob-horned steer, Buck is thrown from his horse into a cleft where he encounters the mystery of a murdered man and a bag of ore that just might be gold. "Turkeyfeather Riders": Jim Sandifer had run Grey Bowen's ranch for years in his absence. When Bowen reappears with his newly betrothed, Rose Martin, and her grown son, Lee, Sandifer is glad to see his boss.

Rock Bannon is a man bred to the Colt and the rugged law of frontier survival. But to a group of naive homesteaders, his reputation as a gunfighter marks him as an outcast among decent folk. So when a smooth-talking scoundrel comes to camp, no one is ready to listen to Bannon's warning. He alone knows that Mort Harper's route leads to certain massacre. Now it is up to Bannon to protect the greenhorn settlers - especially the beautiful Sharon Crockett - and convince them of the truth about Harper before it is too late. For even if the wagon train survives the hostile Indians and desert ahead, it is bound for Bishop's Valley and a vicious land war.

Arthur Fordyce is an ordinary man blessed with a budding career, a lovely fiancee, and a sunny future. He is hardly a criminal - until he finds a wallet stuffed with money at the racetrack. In one "unguarded moment" he removes the cash and throws the billfold away - unaware that he is being watched by a petty crook named Bill Chafey.

They came west to stay, risking their blood to dig the gold, ride the range, conquer the greedy, and carve out a legacy of freedom. Men honed by desert fires and edged by combat with fist and gun. Women tested to the limit of endurance by an unrelenting land. Now, in a long-awaited collection of his stories, Louis L'Amour tells of the real heroes of the frontier, the survivors for whom hanging tough was as natural as drawing breath.

Rafe Caradec had been raised to a hard life in a hard land where death lurked behind every bush and in most men's eyes. Only his courage and his gun had sustained him. That and the unflinching honor that had earned him the respect of every man. Now, that honor was about to lead him into deadly danger against the greatest odds he had ever faced. For Rafe had given his word to a dying man and could not go back on it. The man had been murdered by a cabal of greedy ranchers who wanted his land, and Rafe had sworn to protect that land for the man's wife and infant daughter.

Wetherton has been three months out of town when he finds his first "color", in a crumbling granite upthrust with a vein of quartz that is literally laced with gold! The problem is that the rocks are unstable, and taking out the quartz might just bring the whole thing tumbling down.

Set in New Mexico, A Man Called Trent opens with a nester named Dick Moffitt lying dead where he was killed by King Bill Hale's riders. Sally Crane, who is 16 and was adopted by Moffitt, and Moffitt's 14-year-old Jack witnessed the murder from their hiding place.

The twelve stories in this collection run the spectrum of human emotions as they transport us from the fading majesty of the Old West to a small-town football field to the lonely canyons of one man’s mind. These classic tales of adventure, mystery, mysticism, and suspense epitomize the uniquely American yearning for connection and roots, justice and love, as only L’Amour can. Here is a diverse group of heroes and traitors, outlaws and lawmen—the innocent, the guilty, and those who operate in the shadowy territory outside the reach of justice.

Man Riding West starts out innocently enough when Jim Gary comes upon the trail camp of three men pushing a herd of cattle. One of the men has a shotgun, something usually not carried by men on a trail drive, but Jim asks for coffee anyway. Red Slagle, the ramrod of the outfit, is friendly enough - and even offers Jim a job riding herd. Jim can use the money, and the herd is moving the same direction as Jim, who is on his way to work for Mart Ray, an old saddlemate, now foreman for the Double A brand. It’s the same brand as that on this herd....

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) is a world-renowned novelist and short story writer noted primarily for his stories of the Western frontier. L'Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota and led an active, world-roaming life as, among other things, a seaman, longshoreman, rancher, miner, lumberjack and boxer before focusing on writing after World War II.

Few men were as deadly, or troublesome, with a gun as the Mojave Kid. Ab Kale, marshal of Hinkley, had warned the Kid to stay away from his town. Even as he trained his own adopted son, Riley, to handle a gun, he worried for both of them. He knew the Kid was the bloodthirsty sort who would one day force a showdown. But he couldn't know when, or prepare Riley for the test of his young life.

When Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie rides into a long-abandoned ranch, he discovers the skeleton of its owner. All signs indicate that he was murdered years before, and that his wife and young daughter were taken away by force. Bowdrie vows to bring the killer to justice and to track down the whereabouts of the missing women. The cold trail leads to hot lead in the town of Gabel's Stop, where a hardcase rancher has been waiting 16 years for the payoff of a lifetime.

On the trail of a ruthless killer named Carl Dyson, Ranger Chick Bowdrie finds the body of a rough-riding Californian, dry gulched and left to rot in the sun. With the dead man's horse in tow, Bowdrie ambles into the middle of a dispute between the H&H ranch and the Darcy spread. Seems some H&H hired guns are giving Jack Darcy a hard time...and leading the troublemakers is ranch owner Rack Herman, strangely in the middle of many a run-in.

In Louis L'Amour's frontier stories, the American West is the crucible in which character is tested, reputations are won or lost, and life always hangs in the balance. Struggling to survive against the elements, hostile Indians, or outlaws who prey upon the honest and hardworking, the men and women in these tales each come face-to-face with what they're made of - often in moments that explode with the violence of an avalanche or the speed of a drawn gun.

Two men in the isolated town of Tucker want the XY ranch, Jim Walker and the ruthless Wing Cary, and one of them wants it badly enough to kill for it. The Black Rock Coffin Makers is a tale of suspense and danger, with chases, posses, shootouts, and double-crosses, all for possession of the XY ranch.

No one tells tales of the frontier better than Louis L'Amour, who portrays the human side of westward expansion - the good and the bad - before the days of law and order. Collected here are seven stories penned by America's favorite Western author.