Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

A case of mistaken identity marked O’Brien out for death the minute he rode into Nebraska. A feud had erupted between the local farmers and a scheming loan agent who figured to sell them out. Both sides pegged O’Brien as a vicious gunman named Wes Dexter, who had been hired to settle the matter with violence. That made him a hero to some.... and a target for others.

Arizona Territory, 1882. The Apaches were riding rings around the army, raiding, robbing and killing pretty much wherever they liked. To beat them, Captain Nathan Kelso knew he had to fight them on their own terms, hitting fast and hitting hard. But who was going to listen to a washed-up, borderline drunk? As it turned out, he received support from a surprising quarter, and was ordered to form Company C, a light, mobile unit dedicated to bracing the Apaches wherever they found them.

All Kate Whitney had to do to put Senator George Copperday away for life was take the witness stand and tell the court everything she knew. But if something happened to prevent her from giving evidence - like a well-aimed bullet for example - Copperday would go free. The beautiful target desperately needed protection, and it came in the form of Judge Wilde’s secret army of crime-busters, "The Wilde Boys", six of the toughest - and most unlikely - law-enforcers ever to slap leather.

For more than 10 years Jim Allison packed a marshal's badge in the violent Indian Nations. When he finally quit, it was to move to New Mexico and get into the cattle business. For a time life was hard but good. But then a vicious killer came along and shattered his peaceful existence.

Professor Andrew Murray and his fellow scientists were not to go up into the Texas hill country to carry out weather tests unless they had someone trail-wise along to watch them. So the government sent in its unofficial six-man team of trouble-busters, the Wilde Boys, to play nursemaid.For once it looked as if the west's most reluctant lawmen had been handed a nice, quiet little assignment. But then the bullets started flying ... and in next to no time they were fighting off bushwhackers and nightriders alike.

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?

Arch Bowman raped and murdered his way across the West to become the stuff of legend. But when he survived a near-fatal shooting in Colfax, Colorado, he decided to make the most of his new lease of life and finally settle a long-standing piece of unfinished business... But that didn't mean Bowman was about to go soft. Before he was through, innocent men would die in legendary numbers, and Bowman would make sure that life was hell for a mild-mannered farmer named Walt Canaday.

Jim Allison was delivering cattle to the Apaches up at San Carlos when a chance meeting with a man named Keyhoe drew him into a violent chain of events from which there could only be one winner. Of course, having spent 10 years as a lawman in the Indian nations, Jim was no stranger to gunfights and ambushes. But he was that much older now and a man alone. The life of his closest friend was in the balance, and every hand was turned against him.

Jesse Glover was minding his own business when Ulysses S. Grant summoned him to Washington and asked him to quit the life of a cowboy and go keep Arizona safe from the likes of Cochise and Geronimo. So Jesse saddled up and headed for Fort Bowie, and its Indian-hating commanding officer, Major Nicholas Calloway. Along the way he saved a beautiful White Mountain Apache girl named Morning Star from a monstrous fate.

Freelance fighting man Carter O’Brien had 5,000 reasons to go after the notorious Timberlake brothers. Each was a dollar bill. But there was more to it that just the reward money. Isaac Parker, the "Hanging Judge" himself, had asked O’Brien to track down the murderous outlaws. If he didn’t get them before they got the judge, Parker would wind up handing from his own gallows.

Surveyors working for the Truman Copper Consortium had found what promised to be the biggest copper strike in history. There was just one problem. That vast fortune in red metal sat smack in the middle of land considered sacred to the Apaches. When the surveyors were attacked and slaughtered, it looked as if a full-scale Indian war was about to explode.

They were all elements in a bizarre mystery the likes of which professional adventurer Carter O’Brien had never encountered before. Up until a hidden sniper damn near killed him, all he’d wanted was to ride on to his next job in nearby Jackson’s Peak, but it looked like somebody else had other ideas. Suddenly he was up to his neck in something deadly. Why had people started dying all around him? Who was the bushwhacker and his sinister Oriental sidekick? And why had they picked on him?

Nothing was going to stop Lute Dunbar from getting his revenge - and certainly not the man who now stood before him, blocking his way. He said: “If you plan on grabbing that gun, mister, you’d best get to it.” The invitation hit Cobb like a slap. Knowing there was no way back from it now, his right shoulder dipped, his knees bent just a fraction, and he was fast - damn fast.

It stood to be the biggest oil well in the territory...provided wildcatter Bud Bishop could bring it in before his lease ran out. But the Irishman wanted to make sure he didn't. Then he figured to move in, take ownership, and keep all the spoils of Bishop's hard labor for himself. So Bishop's backers hired freelance fighting man Carter O'Brien to keep Hugh Quillan's bullyboys off his back long enough to get the job done. But the closer it came to the deadline, the harder Quillan started to play.

O'Brien was hunting bounty up in Utah when the deal blew up in his face. Now he was hurting bad and the doctor told him that he'd have to rest up for at least a couple of months before he could even think about strapping his Colt back on. Still, a feller's got to earn a living, and he was grateful when the doctor gave him a job which promised to be nice and quiet. Hardly any more than an easy little trip across the territory.

To the south, Mexico was being torn apart by a revolution, but marshal-turned-rancher Jim Allison didn't give a damn about that...until the rebels crossed over onto American soil one night and made it personal. Next morning, Jim saddled up and rode toward the border, hell-bent on getting revenge on the men who'd shot his friend and stopping the leader of the revolution from laying his hands on 10 priceless white stallions.

Cal Hennessy was on his way to meet up with old friend Billy Dixon at Adobe Walls. The plan was to catch up on each other's news over a beer or three. But before he got there he ran into two dead men and a bunch of blood-hungry Comanches.

Trouble was brewing on the Staked Plains and Hennessy, who was no stranger to it, quickly found himself in the middle of a full-scale Indian war.

It might have been 1895, but the country around Singletree, Montana, was still as wild as ever…The county had a problem with rustlers, and Cyrus McCall, who ran Big Sky, strung barbed wire between his land and that of his neighbor, Maggie Carter, to stop them. From then on, Maggie had to herd her cows an extra two miles before they could reach water, and that took time and manpower she couldn't spare.

The Portuguese slavers called him Sam because they couldn't pronounce his real name. They tore him away from his homeland and put him to work picking cotton in the Tennessee Valley. But the big, fleet-footed Zulu was nobody's slave, and to prove it he escaped and headed west. Throwing in with a medicine show conman named Doc Jonah, Sam started entering county footraces to earn enough money to go back to Africa

Will Hooper was a sodbuster. Lee Early was a cowboy. They'd spent their entire lives on different sides of the fence. But then something terrible happened to make each man look beyond his own petty hatreds...like the outrage that occurred one stormy night at Will's farm.