Showing results by author "Louis L'Amour" in All Categories

Chick Bowdrie, Texas ranger, on the trail of a counterfeiter, investigates a case involving bank robbery and two murders.

Chat Lock is trailed to his ranch by a posse who suspect him of shooting a man in the back in a barroom gun fight.

Billy Dunbar is discovered and attacked by a band of Apaches while prospecting for gold with his two burros.

Wagon trains heading west were forced to defend themselves against Indians, cope with injuries and illness, and struggle to find food. The group of easterners Rock Bannon was scouting for faced another problem. They were being deceived. When he warned them to remain on the Humboldt Trail, Sharon Crockett and the others refused to listen. Mort Harper, a stranger riding a beautiful black mare, had dazzled them with his charm and good looks. The southern route was the best way to go, Harper told them. But best for whom?

The abandoned cabin seemed like a good place to settle down...except for the dead man in the front yard. But Doby Kernohan and his father had traveled a long way seeking a new start, and they were in no position to be choosy. Unfortunately, the mysterious man's violent end was an omen of darker events to come, for a cycle of violence that had begun long ago was about to reach an explosive conclusion. Caught in a tangle of murder, greed, and blood vengeance, the Kernohans have no choice but to get involved.

It seemed the perfect place to lie low. The owner of the ranch was an attractive, gray-haired lady who had once been an actress. The other woman was a beautiful, fragile-seeming blonde. They needed repairs done, and he needed to disappear for a while. The first sign that things were not as they should be was when a Pinkerton man questioned him about a missing woman. Then he accidentally found a will belonging to the previous owner of the ranch. After that, a young lady showed up in town making claims that the place belonged to her.

This collection of six exciting Western stories from early in Louis L’Amour’s career begins with “Fork Your Own Broncs”, in which Mac Marcy, who had saved for seven years to run his own small cattle ranch, sees his dream come true, only to have it threatened by Jingle Bob Kenyon. Also contains “Keep Travelin’, Rider”, “McQueen of the Tumbling K”, “Four Card Draw”, “Mistakes Can Kill You”, and “Showdown on the Tumbling T”.

Exploring the creative process of an American original, the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series will uncover the hidden history behind the author’s best known novels...and his most mysterious and ambitious unfinished works. In this second volume, Beau L’Amour examines how his father made the transition from struggling pulp writer to successful novelist and uses his father’s notes, journal entries, and correspondence to continue the process of seeking out how and why many of these never-before-seen manuscripts were written.

As far as the eye can see is a vast, empty horizon. Evie Teale has finally accepted that her husband won’t be coming home. To make ends meet she runs a temporary stage station. But though she is diligent and careful, Evie must prepare for the day when the passengers no longer come and she must protect her children in an untamed country where’s it’s far easier to die than to live. Miles away, another solitary soul battles for survival. Conagher is a lean, dark-eyed drifter who is not about to let a gang of rustlers push him around.

The twelve stories in this collection run the spectrum of human emotions as they transport us from the fading majesty of the Old West to a small-town football field to the lonely canyons of one man’s mind. These classic tales of adventure, mystery, mysticism, and suspense epitomize the uniquely American yearning for connection and roots, justice and love, as only L’Amour can. Here is a diverse group of heroes and traitors, outlaws and lawmen—the innocent, the guilty, and those who operate in the shadowy territory outside the reach of justice.

Man Riding West starts out innocently enough when Jim Gary comes upon the trail camp of three men pushing a herd of cattle. One of the men has a shotgun, something usually not carried by men on a trail drive, but Jim asks for coffee anyway. Red Slagle, the ramrod of the outfit, is friendly enough - and even offers Jim a job riding herd. Jim can use the money, and the herd is moving the same direction as Jim, who is on his way to work for Mart Ray, an old saddlemate, now foreman for the Double A brand. It’s the same brand as that on this herd....

Tack Gentry has been away for a year when he returns to the familiar buildings of his uncle John Gentry's G Bar ranch. To his amazement, the ranch has a new owner, who is unimpressed when Tack explains that his uncle was a Quaker, didn't believe in violence, and never carried a gun. His advice to Tack is to make tracks. But Tack has other plans.

From one of the greatest storytellers of the American West comes a collection of short stories, including "Death West Bound", "Old Doc Yak", "It's Your Move", "And Proudly Die", "Survival", "Show Me the Way to Go Home", "Thicker Than Blood", "The Admiral", "Shanghai, Not Without Gestures", "The Man Who Stole Shakespeare", "The Dancing Kate", "Off the Mangrove Coast", "Glorious Glorious", "By the Ruins of El Walarieh", "Where There's Fighting", "The Cross and the Candle", "A Friend of the General", "Author's Tea", "Dead End Drift", and "Let Me Forget".

Cattleman Jum Gatlin isn't the kind of man who goes looking for a fight. But he never turns away when one comes looking for him. And that's just what happens when he finds himself mistaken for another man - a man who has some very dangerous enemies.

More than any writer before or since, Louis L'Amour brought the American West to life. His action-packed stories deal with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings are historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad guys, toughs, roughs, sidekicks, and saints.

Louis L’Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a “big country needing big men and women to live in it.” This volume presents five more of L’Amour’s fine short stories about the West.

In "The Trail to Peach Meadow Canyon", Mike Bastian has been raised by outlaw chief Ben Curry and trained in frontier skills by Curry's most trusted associates. Curry now wants to retire from leadership of the gang he has headed for years. But he is frustrated in this ambition by various factions within his gang who want to seize leadership and by Mike himself, who is not sure that he wants to lead the life of an outlaw.

In The Lion Hunter and the Lady, the lion hunter is called Cat Morgan because of his reputation for being able to bag mountain lions alive to sell them to circuses and zoos. As the story opens, Cat is starring down one of the biggest mountain lions he has ever seen. Assisting him is old Long John Williams, a man who is a wizard with a rope, once Cat can lure the prey down onto the ground from a tree.

To get fifty thousand dollars in gold across fifty miles of desert, the desperate band quickly learns how much they need each other - and how deep their greed and suspicion can run. At the end of the journey lie the waters of Baja and a new life in Mexico, but first they have to survive the savage heat, bounty-hunting Yaqui Indians, and the shifting, treacherous nature of both the desert sands and their own conflicting loyalties.

Cattle rancher Ben Kerr wants Jim and Jack Casady's prime farmland real bad. He's offered them good money, but they won't sell. When the Casady brothers find Kerr's cattle grazing on their land, surrounded by broken fences, anger rises up like bile in Jack Casady's gut, and tempers flare.