John Henry Cole Stories
3 total works
John Henry Cole, working as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations, in pursuit of a group of white renegades who were in hiding there above all a particularly vicious renegade named Caddo Pierce. He had a wagon of captive renegades when he was shot and seriously injured. He managed to come out of the Nations with his prisoners, but decided that he had enough of that job and so resigned. Now fifteen years later, employed as a deputy for Judge Roy Bean in Texas, Cole receives a personal summons from Judge Parker. He learns that Caddo Pierce and his gang are systematically murdering Indian law enforcement officers and their families in the Nations. By treaty, Parker cannot send any officer into the Nations to pursue a killer unless that killer has killed a white man, so Cole is without backing in his pursuit of Pierce.
Business lately has been deadly for Ike Kelly. Recent unexpected gunplay has whittled his detective agency down to a single operative: a man named John Henry Cole. Cole is the only man left when a new assignment comes in from a former lover of Kelly’s, a woman operating an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. Three of the young women working for her have been murdered, and someone is trying to cover up their deaths.
It’s a dangerous job, and Cole is advised that he must take every precautionas if he needed such advice. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok was recently murdered at Deadwood, and Calamity Jane Canary and Doc Holliday are among Cole’s potential suspects. Add that to a corrupt constable and a bounty hunter who just happens to be an old enemy of Cole’s, and it’s clear there are many who will not welcome his arrival in Deadwood. Cole is a lonely man in a lonely profession, and finding a murderer in the wild mining camp could be less of a challenge than simply staying alive.
Using real-life characters and settings from one of the most notorious times in the history of the Wild West, veteran author Bill Brooks spins another edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westernsbooks about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indiansare a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
It’s a dangerous job, and Cole is advised that he must take every precautionas if he needed such advice. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok was recently murdered at Deadwood, and Calamity Jane Canary and Doc Holliday are among Cole’s potential suspects. Add that to a corrupt constable and a bounty hunter who just happens to be an old enemy of Cole’s, and it’s clear there are many who will not welcome his arrival in Deadwood. Cole is a lonely man in a lonely profession, and finding a murderer in the wild mining camp could be less of a challenge than simply staying alive.
Using real-life characters and settings from one of the most notorious times in the history of the Wild West, veteran author Bill Brooks spins another edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westernsbooks about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indiansare a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
The winter around Cheyenne Wyoming that year was devastating killing both people and livestock. John Henry Cole was three miles out of town on his small ranch waiting out the storm that was quickly killing his cattle and horses and starting to feel a little crazy himself. Everything he owned was dying before his eyes and there wasn't anything that he could do about it. His dreams of a settled life were as dead as everything else. He knew it was time to move on. And move on he did but not in a direction he expected. Teddy Green a Texas Ranger arrives in Cheyenne and seeks Cole's help in locating Ella Mims a woman who once lived in Cheyenne and with whom Cole had once been intimate. Green wants to question her concerning her involvement in a murder in Denver City. But they would not be the only ones searching for her.
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