Showing results by author "Ben Bridges" in All Categories

It was the kind of sleepy little Texas town where nothing ever happened. Then eight masked men robbed the train from Sterling City and left a handful of bodies behind them, and pretty soon the marshal was up to his badge in problems. First of all there was the murder of one of Coffin Creek's most respected citizens to solve. Then there was the sudden, unwelcome appearance of a federal lawman who figured Marshal Baker was too old for his job.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

They said that Chase Donovan had been a Texas Ranger for too long, that he'd become a law unto himself and that they weren't prepared to put up with his maverick, gun-fast ways any longer. So they took away his badge and kicked him out of the battalion and, almost before he knew it, he'd turned into a full-time drunk.

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.

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.

Professor Andrew Murray and his fellow scientists were not to go up into the Texas hill country to carry out weather tests unless they had someone trail-wise along to watch them. So the government sent in its unofficial six-man team of trouble-busters, the Wilde Boys, to play nursemaid.For once it looked as if the west's most reluctant lawmen had been handed a nice, quiet little assignment. But then the bullets started flying ... and in next to no time they were fighting off bushwhackers and nightriders alike.

Mob rule had taken over the border town of Whetstone, New Mexico. Black-hooded vigilantes were stringing up those they considered to be "undesirables" for even the pettiest of crimes. Someone somewhere had to bring peace back to the beleaguered town - but who in hell was it going to be?

All Kate Whitney had to do to put Senator George Copperday away for life was take the witness stand and tell the court everything she knew. But if something happened to prevent her from giving evidence - like a well-aimed bullet for example - Copperday would go free. The beautiful target desperately needed protection, and it came in the form of Judge Wilde’s secret army of crime-busters, "The Wilde Boys", six of the toughest - and most unlikely - law-enforcers ever to slap leather.

The choice was simple. Sam Lockwood and his fellow Confederate prisoners of war could spend the rest of their days in a Union prison camp, or they could go west to bring law and order back to the wilds of Arizona as "Galvanized Yankees". They chose to ride west, and sure enough, what they found when they got there was a land turned lawless. Apaches were on the warpath and a gang of marauding Mexican bandidos was cutting up rough.

After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Mississippi-born Sam Lockwood was posted to far-away Arizona Territory, where he soon grew to love the hostile desert known as Apacheria. But the Civil War dragged him back to Mississippi, where he experienced all the horrors of a savage conflict, including the hell-on-earth that was the Union prison-camp known as the Rat Hole.

It's the scorching summer of 1878, and a bitter range war is threatening to blow Montana Territory sky-high. On one side there's the all-powerful Stock Grower's Association and its 50-strong army of hired guns. On the other, there's just a handful of families who'll fight to the death to keep the land they've settled on. Trouble is, the Association is slowly but surely winning the struggle.

Coyote was a renegade Apache who’d been spilling blood along the border for months. But now, he’d had enough of killing and was ready to disappear up into the mountains - provided the army agreed to deliver his wife safely to him inside two weeks. If anything happened to that squaw before she was reunited with her man, all hell would break loose; Coyote personally guaranteed it.

Freelance fighting man Carter O’Brien had 5,000 reasons to go after the notorious Timberlake brothers. Each was a dollar bill. But there was more to it that just the reward money. Isaac Parker, the "Hanging Judge" himself, had asked O’Brien to track down the murderous outlaws. If he didn’t get them before they got the judge, Parker would wind up handing from his own gallows.

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.

They were all elements in a bizarre mystery the likes of which professional adventurer Carter O’Brien had never encountered before. Up until a hidden sniper damn near killed him, all he’d wanted was to ride on to his next job in nearby Jackson’s Peak, but it looked like somebody else had other ideas. Suddenly he was up to his neck in something deadly. Why had people started dying all around him? Who was the bushwhacker and his sinister Oriental sidekick? And why had they picked on him?