Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

It started with a slaughter and ended with a massacre, and by the finish of it, Sam Judge and Matt Dury had seen enough bloodshed to last them a lifetime. But the gun-fast men from Texas had signed on to help an army officer get his little girl back from the Apache renegades who’d kidnapped her, and once they gave their word, nothing would stop them from seeing a job through.

Tension was rising fast in the hell-bent-for-leather town of Little Cody, Wyoming. A young girl had been murdered, and the killer was locked up in the local jail, awaiting trial. But the rough-and-ready miners weren’t prepared to let justice take its course. The only law they craved was lynch law. And to make things worse, the killer’s family was trying every dirty trick they could think of to make sure the case never reached the courts.

Right across the West, lawmen were losing their fight against crime. Something had to be done fast. But what? It was a retired judge named Wilde who came up with the answer-to pit one outlaw against another. From that point on, his "law-enforcers" became six of the meanest misfits ever to see the inside of a jail-cell; a murderous albino, a black gunfighter, an Apache half-breed, a one-time Pinkerton detective, a Missouri-born conman and a giant whose hands were deadlier than a Gatling gun

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.

Ash Colter's speed with a gun had turned him into the man they called "The Gunsmoke Legend". But it was a reputation he didn't want. So he put his gun away and rode south, figuring to buy some land and raise horses. To do that he needed money, and to earn that money he agreed to undertake one last, dangerous assignment – to track down the notorious outlaw John Kidd. Backed by an oddly-assorted posse, Colter was soon riding the high lines in his pursuit of the outlaw and his gang. One bloody confrontation piled atop another.

Cal Hennessy was on his way to meet up with old friend Billy Dixon at Adobe Walls. The plan was to catch up on each other's news over a beer or three. But before he got there he ran into two dead men and a bunch of blood-hungry Comanches.

Trouble was brewing on the Staked Plains and Hennessy, who was no stranger to it, quickly found himself in the middle of a full-scale Indian war.

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.

Almost before he knew it, Sam once a celebrated town-tamer whom Ned Buntline himself had called "The Pistol Prince" found himself embarking on a vengeance hunt. A boy Sam hadn't seen for fifteen years was connected with the killers, so that made it personal. But first and foremost, Sam was a peace-keeper. Convinced that the law would hang 'em all, he wanted the outlaws to have their day in court. The only thing he never reckoned on was the fact that they might very well kill him before he could find and catch them.

The Portuguese slavers called him Sam because they couldn't pronounce his real name. They tore him away from his homeland and put him to work picking cotton in the Tennessee Valley. But the big, fleet-footed Zulu was nobody's slave, and to prove it he escaped and headed west. Throwing in with a medicine show conman named Doc Jonah, Sam started entering county footraces to earn enough money to go back to Africa

Hunter took his Colt from leather and checked it over one last time. He should have guessed his vengeance-quest would end in gunplay. Guns had played such a large part in it already; why shouldn't they have the last word? He stepped outside. The street was deserted save for the man who'd called him out, who stood 20 yards away - the most dangerous gunfighter in the whole south-west. Hunter saw faces watching him through dusty windows, and wondered whose side they were on.

King Creek was a rough-and-ready mining town set right in the heart of the Nevada goldfields. There was no law to speak of except Stover's Law - and it was ruthlessly enforced by one greedy woman, her three callous sons, and a dozen hired gunmen. The situation was quickly going from bad to worse. A failed assassination attempt had left the only man capable of defying the freebooters crippled for life, and his wife was at her wits' end.

Tim Dennison died a slow, agonizing death, but because he was a sheep man in a valley that was controlled by two powerful cattle barons, no one cared if his killers got away with murder.

Sam Judge, the legendary town-tamer, had captained a few trains in his day, but he had no particular hankering to relive those wild times all over again. Those settlers still had hundreds of miles to go before they reached their destination, and the way ahead was filled with all kinds of danger. But fate had other ideas for Sam, and when they finally reached trail's end, he and his gun-fast young partner, Matt Dury, found themselves under sentence of death... and about to face a trial by fire!

Rancher Clint McNally was looking for someone to deliver $20,000 to the men who’d kidnapped his young son. Whoever took the job had to be as hard as nails, so professional fighting man Carter O’Brien was the natural choice. Still, McNally knew better than to trust that kind of money to one man, so he gave O’Brien a partner - a one-eyed, cigar-chewing soldier of fortune called Logan Tyree.

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.

Ben Crawford was one of the best lawmen in the business, and when a man named Kane offered him a hundred bucks a month to keep the peace in the fresh, raw town he'd just founded, it sounded exactly like the challenge he'd been looking for. So he took the job...and spent the next 12 years just waiting for something to happen. It never did. In fact, life in Kane's Crossing, New Mexico, grew so damn quiet that the townsfolk eventually decided they didn't really need a lawman at all. But fate had other ideas, because all hell was destined to break loose....

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.

Arizona Territory, 1882. The Apaches were riding rings around the army, raiding, robbing and killing pretty much wherever they liked. To beat them, Captain Nathan Kelso knew he had to fight them on their own terms, hitting fast and hitting hard. But who was going to listen to a washed-up, borderline drunk? As it turned out, he received support from a surprising quarter, and was ordered to form Company C, a light, mobile unit dedicated to bracing the Apaches wherever they found them.