Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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.

Carter O'Brien was greased lightning with a gun and the best freelance fighting man in the business. That's why the greenhorn wanted to hire him. The only trouble was, he'd been sworn to secrecy about his own mysterious mission.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Texas Rangers sent Carter O'Brien south of the border with orders to kill a madman. It was said that his target - a murderous bandit named Salazar - had the face of an angel and the heart of a demon. Certainly, judging by all he'd heard, O'Brien sure figured he needed killing. Given the choice, though, he'd sooner have faced Salazar in a head-on gunfight than turn back shooter and kill him from hiding.

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?

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.

Luke Heller was looking forward to spending some time with his beautiful Oriental partner high in the Colorado Rockies. His job - to handle security at a luxury mountain hotel - should have been a nice, peaceful little assignment. After all, what could possibly happen in a resort full of wealthy Easterners? But Luke didn't know the half of it. Death was stalking the timbered slopes, and it came first in the shape of a grisly murder, then as a violent robbery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A damsel in distress, Wyatt Earp called her. And he was right, too. Because as soon as soon as Luke Heller got involved with the beautiful Irene Lawrence, he found himself up to his neck in murder, intrigue and a mysterious deal so big that it could only end - explosively - seven hundred miles away, on the notorious Barbary Coast. En route, Heller found himself battling thick-armed bullies and bloodthirsty Chinese hatchet-men determined to give him a double profile.

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.

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.