The Big Four ruled a cattle empire. They were the men who had fought and killed to win the land from the Comanches, and now they were not about to hand it over to government squatters no matter what the consequences would be. Martin Kelso has been away for two years, and upon his return, finds that the peaceful plains he calls home have exploded in violence and murder. Cattlemen are ruthlessly driving squatters from their rightful homesteads, and...

"The ten Guilty Guns had ravaged the village of sleeping Cheyennes at dawn, and when the sun came up Little Dry Creek ran crimson with blood. A hundred Indians were cut down that morning. One lived, a toddler, but not for revenge. Found and raised by Tom Ormsby, Johnny wanted only to forget, to make his peace with the white man. Twenty years later, Tom has been the sheriff for fifteen years. Johnny, accepted by the community, has been his deputy for...

Clay Holley and Tom Denton, returning from a successful cattle-selling venture, could hardly wait to see their wives and Tom's young son again. But when the two ranchers topped the last rise before the house where their families were staying, they saw only charred ruins - the mindless destruction of hostile Indians.

Jesse Hand was little more than a boy the first time he used a gun. He saw two strangers wantonly kill old Charlie Two Horses. Now, Charlie was the town drunk, but he was harmless and didn't deserve his fate. So young Jesse shot both men in a burst of fury. From that day forward, Jesse Hand became one of the most feared gunmen in the West.

Up there in the line shack Joe Redenko and his rifle wer waiting. Twenty men rode toward him through the mornign sun. Joe was determine to take as many as he could down with him -- to the places they all surely had reserved in hell.

In "The Killer in Him," Ross McNaul works for the Circle Dot Ranch. Knowledge of a terrible secret concerning his nine-year-old son has been used by Ernest Pfarr, foreman of the ranch, to secure Ross's help in rustling the ranch stock. Now the owner of the ranch is coming West, and Pfarr wants the rest of the cattle to be abandoned to the fury of a blizzard so that he can acquire the ranch himself for a fraction of what it is worth. Ross doesn't want...

"Is Johnny McGrath guilty? Sheriff Owen Buck has Johnny McGrath in jail, waiting to hang for killing the cattleman who was ordered to evict him from his homestead. To make matters even worse for McGrath, he's also accused of seducing the judge's wife! Buck is caught between the demands of the cattlemen, who long to see McGrath hanged -- and the settlers, who want him to go free. And as Buck tries to keep the peace, Apache Junction seethes with violence...

The flint-eyed Texan was a man with a mission: get the wagon train across the treacherous prairies and ambushed mountains, and deliver its cargo into the hands of the Confederacy. None of the homeward-bound pioneers knew that the contraband gold was hidden beneath the false floors of their Conestogas. No one guessed that their wagon master was a rebel officer -- a man who was going to win the war for the South single-handedly -- or kill them all trying....