Buck Johnson, along with his slow-moving and slow-thinking sidekick Skeeter Evans, currently plies his trade as a dragon wrangler on Terul and is busting out a bunch of dracs for the repulsive Terullian Karposh. But when an unruly Red Kraken throws Buck, events take an unexpected turn.

Ranch foreman Ward McQueen recognizes trouble when he sees it - and trouble is what the Texan sees when he spies the tracks of a wounded man in the middle of the big Tumbling K spread. In town, he learns that a tinhorn gambler has just won the ranch next to the Tumbling K in a dirty card game - and is turning his oily gaze toward the K's pretty owner, Miss Ruth Kermitt.

Johnny Buck is a young cowboy, working for the Bar W. In the process of roping an old stob-horned steer, Buck is thrown from his horse - and into a hidden cleft where he encounters the mystery of a murdered man and a bag of ore that just might be gold.

In these extraordinary stories, we meet a man who is forced to defend himself by taking another’s life - and must pay for his actions in a most punishing manner; a young thrill-seeker who finally finds a place he can call home, and vows to stay there - regardless of the man who tries to stand in his way; and a drifter who honors a deathbed promise to a stranger by embarking on an unlikely mission of mercy.

Once, Frank Morgan had a wife and a future on the land — until a rich man with a grudge drove him out of Colorado. Since then, Morgan's taken up the one skill that always came easy — gunfighting — and drifted to a mining town in the New Mexico Territory. But there's nothing easy about two vicious gangs descending on the town and threatening to wreak havoc. With his reputation preceding him, Morgan is elected to stand in the outlaws' way.

The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it — when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm.

In "A Man Called Trent," nester Dick Moffitt lies dead, killed by King Bill Hale's riders. His son Jack and adopted daughter Sally, who witnessed the murder, go for safety to a cabin owned by a man called "Trent" - an alias for Kilkenny, who is seeking to escape his reputation as a gunfighter. In "The Rider of Lost Creek," Lance Kilkenny is the fastest gun in the West, but once the gunfight is over, he disappears. Some time back, Mort Davis saved Kilkenny's life.

After robbing a bank, the Colter Gang stumble on the scene of the massacre of a Cherokee hunting party by cavalry soldiers intent on "pacification". The sole survivor of the raid is a young Indian baby. Even with a posse hot on their trail, young outlaw, Frank Palmer, refuses to simply leave the child to die from exposure to the cold. He pledges to join up with the gang as soon as he can find a place to drop off the child.

Moon Medicine is the story of a boy genius with a peculiar sensitivity to lunar cycles. Jean-Guy lives in a school for boys in France until he murders his vile fencing teacher for raping a woman. He is smuggled aboard a Clipper ship bound for America—the place where he knows he will find the visions of his dreams.

When beautiful Angelina Foley presents Tom Radigan with a Spanish grant and claims ownership of his land, he realizes he's up against a cunning and deadly opportunist. Foley wants him off Vache Creek immediately, and with 3,000 head of cattle, an outfit of hardcase gunfighters, and winter coming on, she is unwilling to take no for an answer.

Owen Burke is at loose ends in the Mexican town of San Rafael. While at the local cantina, he overhears a conversation between two Mexican vaqueros seated nearby and decides to introduce himself. The two men work for Don Enrique Hernandez de Allende at a horse ranch some distance south. The don is planning a horse drive to the north and then west to California, where the don's brother-in-law has a ranch. Owen knows those trails and hopes the don, who has never made the trip before, might be in need of a guide.

Fifteen Montana cowboys and 500 longhorns are embarking on a one-of-a-kind Wild West adventure: a cattle drive across 1,000 miles of Siberia. The clash of cultures between East and West, American six shooter and Russian saber, begins immediately when a band of Cossacks arrives to escort them to their destination. Cowboys and Cossacks must work together or they’ll never survive the journey, which includes a meeting with the warrior Genghis Kharlagawl and his army of bloodthirsty Tartars.

By 1873, the great buffalo herds have been all but wiped out, and the hide hunters are looking for other work. So when Gage Jameson hears of one remaining herd, he sees a final opportunity to make a huge profit. But to find the buffalo, he will have to take his line of wagons deep into Comanche territory, where death lurks behind every rock.

It is 1848, and Francis Tucket is heading west on the Oregon Trail with his family. Yesterday he celebrated his 14th birthday on the tailgate of a Conestoga wagon in the foothills of the Rockies. Today, he is going to practice with his new birthday present, a Lancaster rifle. Falling far behind the wagon train, Francis loses sight of his family and is kidnapped by Pawnee Indians.

Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier - with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. The New York Times best-selling grand master of suspense deftly displays the other side of his genius, with seven classic Western tales of destiny and fatal decision...and trust as essential to survival as it is hard-earned.