Gunfighter
18 total works
The law only caught up with the Venom Snakes and their bitter rivals, the Red Trail Gang, because they were so busy killing each other.
Now, after twenty years in prison, Ashford Sinclair is broke and broken. Without his gang behind him, the once fearsome leader of the Snakes is reduced to eking out a solitary living as a fur trapper. One day, news comes that his son William has married the daughter of Henry Odell, erstwhile leader of the Red Trail Gang.
Furious at his son’s betrayal, Sinclair vows he’ll never speak to him again. But when William is murdered in a land dispute and a gang of hired guns starts threatening his grandson next, Sinclair has no choice but to join forces with his most hated enemy—as the two outlaw grandpas ride for justice!
Ralph Compton Ride the Hammer Down
by Terrence McCauley and Ralph Compton
Marshal John Beck was the law in the dangerous town of Mother Lode, Arizona. On his own, he'd managed to keep bandits, rustlers, and desperados at bay. It was a tough job for one man to handle, but he made it work...until the day Bram Hogan and his Brickhouse Gang got the drop on the lawman.
They beat Beck to within an inch of his life and dropped him in the desert where nothing but a slow, painful death awaited him. But the gang underestimated Beck. Even at his lowest point, he found a way to survive.
Now, he's coming back and anyone who stands against him is going to ride the hammer down to the grave.
Buck Fletcher plans to race his horse for a $10,000 prize—money he needs to send his sick daughter to a faraway clinic. Then some outlaws steal his steed, and his daughter’s last hope with it. Though it’s been ten years since Buck slapped leather and traded lead with the badmen of the frontier, he’s quick to fasten on his gun belt again for the chase.
The thieves are led by Port Austin, a man who fears no retribution for the lives he takes—not with a ruthless band of brothers guarding his back. But Buck is not alone either. Doc Holliday, a legend of loyalty and ferocity, rides beside him, eager to help on a mission of vengeance—and a quest to save a little girl’s life....
More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books in Print!
Young doctor Gabriel Kincade has come west to experience the challenges of frontier medicine. He's agreed to help an older doctor who is straining to deal with the demands of a growing town, but Kincade is looking for more than a new life. He's made mistakes in his old one that he is trying to leave behind him. He's about to find out that some mistakes won't stay hidden.
The West has a way of revealing a man's character, but it can also reveal secrets that are best left hidden.
It's been ten years since the worst day of Ben Dalton's life. After four grinding years of war, the Confederate veteran returned to his hometown of Aberdeen, Texas, to find that Mandy, the girl he loved, had run off with his best friend, John Rawlings. Dalton recovered from the loss and spent the next decade settling down to life as the town's marshal.
That quiet life is shattered with the arrival of one stunning telegram. Mandy begs her old friend to come to Fort Worth, where her lawyer husband has been arrested for murder. Without a second's hesitation, Dalton heads to the big city, where he will discover that the forces who want Rawlings convicted won't hesitate to commit a second murder to silence a visiting lawman.
Riding into the town of Smoky River on a mangy mule, Dane looks as broken down as his old mount. His Stetson is ragged, his boots are tied together with leather thongs, and he wears a Colt Army revolver with exactly three bullets. He wouldn't know what to say if you asked him where he got the gun, or how he learned to shoot it so well. He doesn't know if Dane is his first name or his last. Something happened that cost him much of his memory, and he can't remember what that something was. For three years he's been traveling the West as a cowboy, a buffalo hunter, a farmhand. Smoky River looks to be a fine place to settle down. If only his past didn't decide to catch up to him here. . .
John Stockbridge was once a peaceful man of medicine. Now, he's better known as Dr. Vengeance, a man who is as fast with a shotgun as any other gunfighter is with a six-gun. The murders of his wife and child left him with an aching hole where his soul once was. His only solace comes from wandering the West.
Along the way, he encounters a woman and her two children searching for their missing fur-trapper husband/father in the Rockies. In the process, they run afoul of some foul former Confederates who have amassed money and local power by robbing those traveling west through a mountain pass. While searching for the missing trapper -- and aided by a Mexican mountain man and an independent woman who works at the local hotel-- Stockbridge must take down the vicious highwaymen one by one.
Brothers Clay and Cal Breckenridge, sons of a hardscrabble East Texas farmer, never did see eye to eye. Clay, the eldest, returned home after the Civil War to help his father run the family farm; Cal deserted his military post and disappeared into a new life with a new name. Everyone knew who was the good son and who was the bad.
Clay had almost forgotten his wayward brother until the morning a limping horse approaches the farm with young Cal Breckenridge’s body slumped in the saddle, shot in the back.
Vowing to avenge Cal’s death, Clay sets off on a perilous journey across the West to find the man responsible and bring him to justice—and take down an outlaw enterprise in the process.
Matt Wheeler was a legend in the West. His fast gun and dedication for justice made him a sought-after lawman for hire, but all of that vanished one dark night. Matt was convicted of murder for killing the man who killed his woman. Now he's spent his time in jail and is looking to even the score against the men who set him up.
A gunman without a gun wakes up in Death Valley. He has no recollection of how he got there, or even his own name. He's a dead man walking until his luck turns. He stumbles upon the homestead of a widow and her young son who nurse him back to health.
But in the desert good deeds come at a cost. The amnesiac is being trailed by hard men who want answers he doesn't have. First a group of gunslingers, then a troop of soldiers threaten the innocent family. Their only hope of rescue is the very man who got them in this predicament.
But how can he help them when he doesn't even know who he is? At least the men who want to kill him seem to know his name. Maybe they'll put it on his gravestone.
When twenty-five-year-old Lewis Taylor is released from the Texas State Prison, he receives little attention as he walks into the midday sunlight, free after serving five years for a crime he didn’t commit.
His only interest is in getting back to his hometown of Gila Bend, Texas, a quiet farming community about which he has only warm, idyllic memories. During his long years in prison, he survived by thinking fondly of the home he'd known since boyhood—and of one special girl, Darla Winslow.
What he finds instead is a town dramatically changed. Once a happy and carefree place to live, it is now populated by people who are angry and afraid. One man, Captain Archer Ringewald, has taken control of the town, and now he's turning the townspeople, even Darla, against Taylor. Can one ex-con single-handedly save an entire town?
One terrible day, fifteen-year-old Leif Gunnarson comes home to find his family home on fire and a gruesome scene inside: his parents are tied up, on the brink of death among the hellish flames, and his sister is nowhere to be found. His father can barely gasp a name: Simkins. And with that, Leif has his life’s mission—to track down Luther Simkins, notorious outlaw and gang leader, and find his sister.
Along the way, Leif finds a temporary home in Wyoming Bob’s Wild West Show. He has an innate talent with firearms but needs to hone those skills until he can outshoot anyone, even Simkins. Touring the West as the star performer known as Trickshot, Leif finally gets wind of an outlaw who could lead him to his sister. It will be the most important showdown of his life—but will his sharpshooting be a match for the shocking tricks the outlaw has up his sleeve?
A Native American woman has been abducted and Indian Police Officer Edwin Folsom is determined to find her. Although despised by his people for working for the U.S. government, he is descended from a long line of proud native warriors, and he vows that the kidnapper will pay dearly.
Witnesses say the victim was taken by a group of white men in thrall to a holy man, but John Deacon is anything but holy. He has led The Cult of Penitence to this valley in Oklahoma looking to avenge himself on the man who gave him the scar disfiguring his face. Enraged to learn Ash Sinclair is dead, he concocts a deranged new plan: one that requires the blood of Sinclair’s young grandson, Connor.
With local law enforcement arrayed against him, Folsom has only Sinclair’s family to help him stop Deacon before his insane ritual is completed...
Ralph Compton the Wrong Side of the Law
by Robert J. Randisi and Ralph Compton
Jake Polk is a wanted man. He's spent years on the wrong side of the law staying one step ahead of the marshals. His most recent stage robbery ends with a posse hot on his trail. He's opened up just enough room to take a breather when he stumbles upon something astonishing. It's the body of a man resting peacefully next to a burned-out campfire. It's clear the man died in his sleep of natural causes. This is the chance Jake has been waiting for.
According to a letter in the man's saddlebag, he's Marshall Owen Dent, on his way to the town of Riverbend to take over as the local lawman. Jake switches identities to avoid the posse, but what starts out as a quick means of escape may have deeper consequences when Jake considers making the change permanent.
Twenty years ago, Sherman Knowles was notorious as a fearsome shootist with an itchy trigger finger and a hot temper. Now he resides in peaceful Elam Hollow, his gunslinging days far behind him. He hasn't fired a weapon in over a decade and is happy for that to be the end of the matter.
Then he receives a visit from his brother's widow, asking for his help in finding his kidnapped niece, and Sherman is left with no choice but to pick up his guns once more and head out into the wilderness to rescue her before it's too late. But you cannot escape the past, and Sherman soon finds the ghosts of yesterday waiting for him on the bleak, unforgiving prairie...