Showing results by author "William Johnstone" in All Categories

Colton Gray doesn't look like your typical deputy marshal. He's too young and good-looking for a West Texas lawman. At least that's what his boss thinks. As captain, Marshal John Timmons feels this new kid Colton isn't up to the job—at least not yet—so he sends him on minor assignments to keep him out of Boot Hill. But to everyone's surprise, young Colton manages to track down Eli Doolin and Casey Tubbs, the notorious "Old Man Bank Robbers." Not only that, he claims he gunned them down in a shootout, earning high praise from the West Texas chief marshal's office. And a legend is born.

From the battlegrounds of Texas to the Colorado Rockies and the goldfields of California, Jamie MacCallister was one of a handful of daring pioneers blazing trails in the American West. Joining famed frontiersman Kit Carson on the first US Army expedition from Missouri to the wide Pacific, he forged a future in a dawning era of greatness and greed that would stain the pages of history with blood—and make men like MacCallister into legends.

If there's anything better than coming home to Texas, it's getting paid to do it. For Scratch Morton and Bo Creel, always on the hunt for funds, the job is taking three vicious criminals from Arkansas to Tyler, Texas for trial. Little do they know that one of the criminals, the one that's a beautiful woman, is the most dangerous of all. Soon the journey home turns into a race for buried treasure, a shoot-out, and another double cross - until Scratch and Bo are making one last mad, bullet-sprayed dash through the land of their birth...or the land of their death....

Smoke Jensen was a towering Western hero. Now his two freewheeling, long-lost nephews, Ace and Chance Jensen, are blazing a legendary trail of their own. Riverboat gambling is a blast until hot-headed Chance finds out just what he won in his final hand against a Missouri River gambler named Haggarty. Chance's "prize" is a beautiful Chinese slave girl named Ling. The twins want to set Ling free and keep their cash, but at Fort Benton, Ling gives them the slip, robbing them blind.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

A wagon train of pioneers is struggling Westward toward Oregon through the howling winter and a band of Arikara warriors are hot on their trail. Little do the Arikaras suspect that they're about to come face-to-face and gun-to-gun with a ferocious fight they never expected, courtesy of the wily mountain man called Preacher. As Preacher struggles to bring the settlers to safety, he learns the real reason they were attacked and begins to suspect that the secrets they've been keeping equal a worse kind of danger.

When Smoke Jensen is summoned to a small Texas town under siege by a scourge of kill-crazy bandits, volunteers line up to take out the Mountain Man. Being Smoke Jensen, he wouldn’t have it any other way. A gunshot wound has robbed Audubon, Texas, of its top lawman at the worst possible time. Clete Lanagan and his band of outlaws have hatched a scheme to plunder the town bank of a small fortune in railroad money. When the acting sheriff, Dalton Conyers - half-brother of Smoke’s niece Rebecca - is unable to raise a posse to hunt down Lanagan’s gang, he calls on Smoke for help.

Keeping the peace in a West Texas town like Buffalo Peak should be easy for a legendary frontiersman like Marshal Elwood "Firestick" McQueen. He’s got his longtime buddies "Beartooth" Skinner and "Moosejaw" Hendricks as his deputies — not to mention the famous rifle that earned him his nickname. But when Firestick learns that their ornery old friend “Rip” Ripley just rode into town, all bets are off.

Mountain man Smoke Jensen lives by the rules of the frontier. The first rule is: the strongest survive. But when bad breaks, bad weather and bad bovines back Smoke into a corner, he needs something to go right. Instead, he faces the kind of tough luck only a gun can beat....A contract to deliver 3000 head of cattle might just do the trick. But a renegade Cheyenne warrior uses an early winter blizzard to attack Smoke and his out-gunned cowboys.

No one remembered when he’d come to the mountains - it seemed like Preacher had always been there. He’d seen a world of wonders in the unmapped mountains and forests of the vast North American frontier. In fact, he figured he wouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. But that was before Preacher traveled into the Ferris Range of Wyoming and discovered the city of Nova Roma....

Mac knows he's a dead man. His only hope is to join another cattle drive on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, deep in New Mexico Territory. The journey ahead is even deadlier than the hired guns behind him. His trail boss is an ornery cuss. His crewmate is the owner's spoiled son. And the route is overrun with kill-crazy rustlers and bloodthirsty Comanche. To make matters worse, Mac's would-be killers are closing in fast. But when the cattle owner's son is kidnapped, the courageous young cook has no choice but to jump out of the frying pan - and into the fire....

If anyone can get a shipment of brides to the church on time, it's Bo Creel and Scratch Morton. But this time, they'll have to cross hell and high water to escort four marriage-bound beauties to a remote gold-mining town in Alaska. The brides-to-be include a dangerously attractive widow, her sweet-hearted niece, and two of their friends. The roadblocks to the altar include a lecherous saloon owner, a lovesick sailor, and a gang of hired guns. And that's just for starters....

William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone present Book 52 in the Mountain Man series.

The train grinds to a halt somewhere in the Indian Nations, and the bandits get onboard. They take everything on the train worth stealing and gun down a guard to make their escape — just another notch on the belt for Ben Trout and Zack Larsen, two of the most savage killers in the west. US Deputy Marshal Ed Pine follows them to Muskogee. There the trail runs cold, and Ed Pine disappears.

He calls himself The King. Once a respected professor, he was ruined by scandal. Now, he rules his own “country”—an area of western territory where an army of outlaws enforce his laws. Any town he claims as his own must pay “taxes,” collected from bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. When he learns that President Rutherford B. Hayes and General William Tecumseh Sherman are venturing into the far west on a tour of the nation, The King devises a plan to kidnap America’s leaders and expand his empire.

They are strangers in a strange land - a band of German immigrants trespassing across the Jensen family spread. Led by a baron fleeing a dark past in Germany and accompanied by a woman beautiful enough to dazzle young Matt, the pilgrims are being pursued by a pack of brutal outlaws hungry for blood, money - or maybe something else…. The Jensens are willing to help the pioneers get to the promised land in Wyoming. But they don’t know the whole story of their newfound friends, or who the outlaws really are.

In the bustling streets of St. Louis, two cousins have a dream: to travel west with a wagon train of supplies and make a fortune in trade. Preacher needs a job and is heading west anyway. But he doesn't bargain on the beautiful woman who sneaks her way into the wagon train and the trouble she brings on board.

The Sante Fe Trail stretches from the Mississippi River to New Mexico Territory through the West's most savage lands. That's why a wealthy trader hires the mountain man called Preacher to keep his trade goods safe. But then, a towering, seemingly supernatural grizzly bear attacks. Both outlaws and Comanches ambush the wagon train. And the travelers find themselves surrounded by predators of every shape and stripe. For Preacher, there is only one way to go - straight into the heart of danger, to blaze a killing trail of his own....

Preacher, against his better judgment, agrees to lead a wagon train of women across the West. He hires a pack of mountain men to assist him, but he gets more than he bargained for when a gang of cutthroats follows the train with murder, rape and slave trafficking in mind. Led by the nefarious Easterner Victor Bedell, the outlaws will accomplish what few have done before: they will get a bullet into Preacher. But they’ll make a fatal mistake. They’ll leave him for dead. Soon the mountains will echo with avenging gunfire.

Sheriff McCabe knew he’d make a lot of enemies when he agreed to be a special agent for the Texas governor. But now that he’s managed to keep the peace in the hopeless town of New Hope, he’s hoping he can go home to Two Forks and get back to business as usual. No such luck. The corrupt marshal of East City, Micah Moran, and his murdering band of kill-crazy cutthroats are running wild, leaving the folks in East City in a deadly grip of terror. Now, Two Forks will have to wait because Micah Moran and his evil gang need to be taught some manners—with McCabe’s own brand of retribution.