Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

Almost before he knew it, Sam once a celebrated town-tamer whom Ned Buntline himself had called "The Pistol Prince" found himself embarking on a vengeance hunt. A boy Sam hadn't seen for fifteen years was connected with the killers, so that made it personal. But first and foremost, Sam was a peace-keeper. Convinced that the law would hang 'em all, he wanted the outlaws to have their day in court. The only thing he never reckoned on was the fact that they might very well kill him before he could find and catch them.

Jack Page was a living legend - a Union Army sharpshooter, scout, Indian fighter, and US Marshal. Ash Colter, by contrast, was a mild-mannered orphan. They were complete opposites. And yet, theirs was a partnership forged in blood and destined to go down in history. These were the men who survived the famous Snake River Shootout, the men who led Colonel George Armstrong Custer to one of his most controversial victories against the Cheyenne.

A desperate telegram from young Lane Jenkins brought Flint McKay north to Montana, where Randolph Billington was using every dirty trick in the book to take over the territory. But what could Flint do about it? He was just an ageing drifter with failing eyesight. He had no home and no kin, just a horse, a saddle and a pistol he’d won in a bunkhouse poker game.

Sam Judge, the legendary town-tamer, had captained a few trains in his day, but he had no particular hankering to relive those wild times all over again. Those settlers still had hundreds of miles to go before they reached their destination, and the way ahead was filled with all kinds of danger. But fate had other ideas for Sam, and when they finally reached trail's end, he and his gun-fast young partner, Matt Dury, found themselves under sentence of death... and about to face a trial by fire!

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.

They said that Chase Donovan had been a Texas Ranger for too long, that he'd become a law unto himself and that they weren't prepared to put up with his maverick, gun-fast ways any longer. So they took away his badge and kicked him out of the battalion and, almost before he knew it, he'd turned into a full-time drunk.

After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Mississippi-born Sam Lockwood was posted to far-away Arizona Territory, where he soon grew to love the hostile desert known as Apacheria. But the Civil War dragged him back to Mississippi, where he experienced all the horrors of a savage conflict, including the hell-on-earth that was the Union prison-camp known as the Rat Hole.

Tim Dennison died a slow, agonizing death, but because he was a sheep man in a valley that was controlled by two powerful cattle barons, no one cared if his killers got away with murder.

It was the kind of sleepy little Texas town where nothing ever happened. Then eight masked men robbed the train from Sterling City and left a handful of bodies behind them, and pretty soon the marshal was up to his badge in problems. First of all there was the murder of one of Coffin Creek's most respected citizens to solve. Then there was the sudden, unwelcome appearance of a federal lawman who figured Marshal Baker was too old for his job.

Right across the West, lawmen were losing their fight against crime. Something had to be done fast. But what? It was a retired judge named Wilde who came up with the answer-to pit one outlaw against another. From that point on, his "law-enforcers" became six of the meanest misfits ever to see the inside of a jail-cell; a murderous albino, a black gunfighter, an Apache half-breed, a one-time Pinkerton detective, a Missouri-born conman and a giant whose hands were deadlier than a Gatling gun

Ben Crawford was one of the best lawmen in the business, and when a man named Kane offered him a hundred bucks a month to keep the peace in the fresh, raw town he'd just founded, it sounded exactly like the challenge he'd been looking for. So he took the job...and spent the next 12 years just waiting for something to happen. It never did. In fact, life in Kane's Crossing, New Mexico, grew so damn quiet that the townsfolk eventually decided they didn't really need a lawman at all. But fate had other ideas, because all hell was destined to break loose....

King Creek was a rough-and-ready mining town set right in the heart of the Nevada goldfields. There was no law to speak of except Stover's Law - and it was ruthlessly enforced by one greedy woman, her three callous sons, and a dozen hired gunmen. The situation was quickly going from bad to worse. A failed assassination attempt had left the only man capable of defying the freebooters crippled for life, and his wife was at her wits' end.

After he saw his father set upon and stabbed, nothing was ever the same for the boy who would grow up to become Buffalo Bill Cody. The hatred and bigotry his family suffered in Kansas led him to kill his first man when he was just 10 years old. And in the years that followed, he would face one battle after another - against marauding Cheyenne, against the elements and against the Great Plains themselves.

Tension was rising fast in the hell-bent-for-leather town of Little Cody, Wyoming. A young girl had been murdered, and the killer was locked up in the local jail, awaiting trial. But the rough-and-ready miners weren’t prepared to let justice take its course. The only law they craved was lynch law. And to make things worse, the killer’s family was trying every dirty trick they could think of to make sure the case never reached the courts.

Jake was trustworthy, he spoke Spanish and he knew how to get a tough job done. In next to no time, however, he and his young British partner in crime a would-be Hollywood movie writer were playing cat-and-mouse with the armies of two countries, trying to get even with the men who double-crossed them and, in a final terrifying showdown, pitting their wits against the Mexican Army's latest secret weapon!

Hunter took his Colt from leather and checked it over one last time. He should have guessed his vengeance-quest would end in gunplay. Guns had played such a large part in it already; why shouldn't they have the last word? He stepped outside. The street was deserted save for the man who'd called him out, who stood 20 yards away - the most dangerous gunfighter in the whole south-west. Hunter saw faces watching him through dusty windows, and wondered whose side they were on.

Coyote was a renegade Apache who’d been spilling blood along the border for months. But now, he’d had enough of killing and was ready to disappear up into the mountains - provided the army agreed to deliver his wife safely to him inside two weeks. If anything happened to that squaw before she was reunited with her man, all hell would break loose; Coyote personally guaranteed it.

When you've got only five shots left, you have to make each one count. Like the outlaw whose quest for revenge didn't quite go according to plan. Or the cowboy who ended up using a most unusual weapon to defeat his Cheyenne enemy. Then there was the storekeeper who had to face his worst fear; the down-at-heel sheepherder who had to set past hatreds aside when a bunch of renegade Comanches went on the warpath; and the elderly couple who struggled to keep a secret that threatened to tear them apart.

It didn’t matter a damn that Bill Doolin had never killed another man, that he was a loving husband and a devoted father with a young son.

Lew Eden was 13 when he killed his first man. A lot more died at his hand before he finally had his fill of blood and bullets. Then he decided to enlist in the newly formed Seminole-Negro Scouts, hoping to do what he could to broker peace between white man and red.