Burlington Public Library

Shanghaied into forced labor on a merchant vessel, Charles Rodney dies aboard ship from repeated beatings -- but not before deeding part of his ranch to Rafe Caradec, who he hopes will protect his family.

Matt Bardoul was a good man to have as a friend and a bad one to make trouble with. He was also a single-minded drifter - until he met his match in an outspoken beauty named Jacquine Coyle. She was headed into the Bighorn Mountains with her father and an expedition in search of gold. After Matt signs on to join them, he discovers that there is a group of outlaws in the party - gunfighters and thieves that Matt wouldn't trust for a minute. At first...

Considine and Pete Runyon had once been friends, back in the days when both were cowhands. But when Runyon married the woman Considine loved, the two parted ways. Runyon settled down and became a sheriff. Considine took up robbing banks. Now Considine is planning a raid on the bank at Obaro, a plan that will pit him against Runyon . . . and lead to riches or suicide. The one thing he never counted on was meeting a strong, beautiful woman and her stubborn...

Flagan and Galloway Sackett are heading west when they meet an old Irish horsetrader who offers them two fine horses if they escort his granddaughter, Judith, to her father's ranch in Colorado. Unfortunately, the girl was being courted by the outlaw James Black Fetchen, who doesn't want to let her go. Fetchen and his gang leave a trail of robbery and murder behind as they race the Sackett brothers and Judith to the ranch.

Logan Cates knew the many ways the Arizona desert could kill a man. He had ridden the sunblasted dunes, tracked the Apache over barren lava beds, sheltered in the dry washes of this forbidding land. Above all, he knew a man needed water to survive. Cates rode to Papago Wells a few miles ahead of an Apache war party led by the vicious Churupati. There he met a dozen desert wanderers whom chance had led to the only water between Yuma and hell. There...

He was called Nevada, a name he took to lose his past. As a boy he had been thrown among brutal and evil men. He had worked himself above their influence time and again, only to be thrown back, by his own desire for justice or vengeance, into the midst of strife. With a new identity he made a new reputation, but old troubles and old enemies haunted him wherever he went. Nevada was the quiet type who would rather work hard and plan for better days....

Orlando Sackett got to Texas with a damn good idea of the whereabouts of buried gold across the border in Mexico. In Mexico he had bad luck. His party had to run for it, and when Lando stood rear guard they pulled out and left him. Six years in a Mexican prison put muscles in his arms, fire in his heart and pure recklessness in his head. He survived by using his skills as a boxer and by making three vows. One was to find the men who betrayed him....

Tyrel Sackett was born to trouble, but vowed to justice. After having to kill a man in Tennessee, he hit the trail west with his brother Orrin. Those were the years when decent men and women lived in fear of Indians, rustlers, and killers, but the Sackett brothers worked to make the West a place where people could raise their children in peace. Orrin brought law and order from Santa Fe to Montana, and his brother Tye backed him up every step of the...

Left to die by his vengeful grandfather, rescued by outlaws, and raised by Native Americans, Johannes Verne is strengthened by his love for two women and his ambition to survive on the Palm Springs desert.

When Paul Manning set out in search of adventure, he didn't realize what was in store. He'd never been in a blistering hellhole like Bitter Seeps or met a man as crooked as Belmont. And he'd never laid eyes on a woman as good as Belmont's wife, Louise. Manning had an awful lot of growing up to do if he wanted to stay alive.