In El-Sombre-Shadow of the Mast, (sequel to El Sombre-Shadow of the Saguaro) the author has attempted to use, as background, the Porforio Diaz regime in the early 1800s in Mexico. Some of the characters in this fictional account are actual historical personages, but the dialogues are completely fictional and not intended to reflect any strengths or weaknesses in the character of these individuals, personally. However, in this fictional account they are used in abstract to portray the usual conflict of democracy and dictatorship, the predator and the prey, the oppressed and the oppressor, with the fate of the innocent hanging in the balance. This conflict of the ages will continue until the second appearance of "The King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords," but in the meantime, when the cause is just, and the time critical, God will always have his valiant "man of the hour" to help mankind cope with the occasion-such a man as El Sombre Except for the Biblical truths contained herein, the opinions expressed in the book are not those of the author, but the opinions of a shadowy and mysterious figure known as El Sombre, code name: Shadow-man, who worked in that era under the auspices of a private enterprise known as High Command Liaison, which in turn, either accepted or rejected assignments, at its own discretion, from a world-wide organization known as High Command, which would later become known as the League of Nations, and would Evolve into what we know today as the United Nations.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - I loved outdoor life and hunting. Some way a grizzly bear would come in when I tried to explain forestry to my brother. Hunting grizzlies! he cried. "Why, Ken, father says you've been reading dime novels." Just wait, Hal, till he comes out here. I'll show him that forestry isn't just bear-hunting. My brother Hal and I were camping a few days on the Susquehanna River, and we had divided the time between fishing and tramping. Our camp was on the edge of a forest some eight miles from Harrisburg. The property belonged to our father, and he had promised to drive out to see us. But he did not come that day, and I had to content myself with winning Hal over to my side.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - It was inevitable that in my efforts to write romantic history of the great West I should at length come to the story of a feud. For long I have steered clear of this rock. But at last I have reached it and must go over it, driven by my desire to chronicle the stirring events of pioneer days. Even to-day it is not possible to travel into the remote corners of the West without seeing the lives of people still affected by a fighting past. How can the truth be told about the pioneering of the West if the struggle, the fight, the blood be left out? It cannot be done. How can a novel be stirring and thrilling, as were those times, unless it be full of sensation? My long labors have been devoted to making stories resemble the times they depict. I have loved the West for its vastness, its contrast, its beauty and color and life, for its wildness and violence, and for the fact that I have seen how it developed great men and women who died unknown and unsung

Life remains hazardous for the pioneers of the Ohio River settlements. Colonel Zane and Jonathan Zane with Lewis Wetzel-the Death Wind-maintain their vigilance and tenuous dominance over Fort Henry and the surrounding wilderness of the great forest. Still the savage Indians of the deep woods remain a constant danger-as do the white renegade bands who live among them. If these threats were not test enough a new danger has arisen and the blockhouse walls may not be enough to protect the pioneers. There is a traitor among them who puts them all at risk. This final volume of Zane Grey's Ohio River Trilogy is a gripping finale to a great series-another thrilling story of life and death on the early American frontier and a classic in the tradition of Drums Along the Mohawk.Volume 1 Betty Zane and volume 2 The Spirit of the Border are available in Leonaur editions now!

Joe Manning owned a good-size ranch outside of a small town in Virginia, and he was plowing one day close to his house. He was getting ready to plant a garden patch for the family to use for their livelihood. Three men came along the road. All three had sidearms and one man had a rifle. He shot Joe in the back while Joe was trying to get to the house to get his rifle and defend his family. Then they killed his wife and young daughter, burned the house down around them, and left Joe in his yard bleeding to death. Joe, who cared deeply about people, was the first person in the community to volunteer to help everyone who was in need. Joe, with his wife at one time or another, had entertained in their home all the people in the area. Who could have shot poor Joe Manning in the back twice and destroyed his family and house? What is going on around here? This has always been a nice area of the country. I wonder who is behind all this killing. Why would they kill his wife and daughter, and why would they have burned down his nice house? This is really a mystery. I wonder if Joe will survive. The doctor does not think so. I wonder what the sheriff is doing about it. He does not seem to have a clue. Will anyone else have to die before we find out who the culprits are?

When the "Wind of Death" blows through the forest an Indian will die!Fort Henry still stands as a bastion for the settlers on the frontier along the Ohio River. More pioneers are now moving west to carve new lives out of the wilderness. Among them-the Wells sisters and the Downs brothers-are seized by the zeal to create a kingdom of peace for white man and Indian alike. Some fired the spirit of adventure in an untamed land. Lewis Wetzel, the Death Wind, still patrols the forest seeking hostile enemies-the warriors of fierce tribes, but also, now, the Girty brothers and their gang of white renegades are his quarry. This is an adventure of massacre, abduction, murder and battle on the early frontiers of an emergent America. Those who enjoyed The Northwest Passage and Drums Along the Mohawk will find much to satisfy them in these pages.Volume 1 Betty Zane and volume 3 The Last Trail are available in Leonaur editions now!

Texas was a huge wide place full of frontiersmen, ranchers, farmers, cowpokes, shiftless no-accounts, shootists, rascals, and politicians -- all of them blended together into a single state. The Rangers -- lawmen, "Texas" Rangers -- were outnumbered a thousand to one, and in one county -- Pecos county -- the law was all but helpless. Until Ranger Vaughn Steel went to Pecos, looking for revenge. . . .

In a country ravaged by the horrors of a brutal civil war, there were countless families torn apart by conflict and violence. This is the story of one ordinary man driven by loss to extraordinary acts and circumstances.

Simon James Sublette lost his entire family during the Civil War. He dreams of coming home and settling into a quiet, peaceful life on his family farm-until those dreams are shattered by a stray bullet. Forever scarred, inside and out, he abandons all he knows and loves. He sets out on a lonely journey, wandering the West in a desperate quest for peace and order. But with each passing day, serenity still eludes him and his heart grows ever heavier. Torn by grief and fighting off hopelessness, he finds beauty in a more poetic way of life. He develops the unusual trait of speaking in rhyme, especially when provoked.

This trait earns him the name "The Rhymer," and he becomes a fearless gunfighter who has no equal when it comes to killing. The Rhymer is a hero for women and children everywhere-and a nightmare straight from hell for those evil men in need of killing.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - In the early sixties a trail led from the broad Missouri, swirling yellow and turgid between its green-groved borders, for miles and miles out upon the grassy Nebraska plains, turning westward over the undulating prairie, with its swales and billows and long, winding lines of cottonwoods, to a slow, vast heave of rising ground - Wyoming - where the herds of buffalo grazed and the wolf was lord and the camp-fire of the trapper sent up its curling blue smoke from beside some lonely stream; on and on over the barren lands of eternal monotony, all so gray and wide and solemn and silent under the endless sky; on, ever on, up to the bleak, black hills and into the waterless gullies and through the rocky gorges where the deer browsed and the savage lurked; then slowly rising to the pass between the great bold peaks, and across the windy uplands into Utah, with its verdant valleys, green as emeralds, and its haze-filled canons and wonderful wind-worn cliffs and walls, and its pale salt lakes, veiled in the shadows of stark and lofty rocks, dim, lilac-colored, austere, and isolated; ever onward across Nevada, and ever westward, up from desert to mountain, up into California, where the white streams rushed and roared and the stately pines towered, and seen from craggy heights, deep down, the little blue lakes gleamed like gems; finally sloping to the great descent, where the mountain world ceased and where, out beyond the golden land, asleep and peaceful, stretched the illimitable Pacific, vague and grand beneath the setting sun.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed with slowly realizing eyes. A league-long slope of sage rolled and billowed down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, denuded and glistening, a hollow in the desert, a lonely and desolate door to the vast, wild, and broken upland beyond. All day Shefford had plodded onward with the clear horizon-line a thing unattainable; and for days before that he had ridden the wild bare flats and climbed the rocky desert benches. The great colored reaches and steps had led endlessly onward and upward through dim and deceiving distance. A hundred miles of desert travel, with its mistakes and lessons and intimations, had not prepared him for what he now saw. He beheld what seemed a world that knew only magnitude. Wonder and awe fixed his gaze, and thought remained aloof. Then that dark and unknown northland flung a menace at him. An irresistible call had drawn him to this seamed and peaked border of Arizona, this broken battlemented wilderness of Utah upland; and at first sight they frowned upon him, as if to warn him not to search for what lay hidden beyond the ranges.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - At sunset hour the forest was still, lonely, sweet with tang of fir and spruce, blazing in gold and red and green; and the man who glided on under the great trees seemed to blend with the colors and, disappearing, to have become a part of the wild woodland. Old Baldy, highest of the White Mountains, stood up round and bare, rimmed bright gold in the last glow of the setting sun. Then, as the fire dropped behind the domed peak, a change, a cold and darkening blight, passed down the black spear-pointed slopes over all that mountain world. It was a wild, richly timbered, and abundantly watered region of dark forests and grassy parks, ten thousand feet above sea-level, isolated on all sides by the southern Arizona desert - the virgin home of elk and deer, of bear and lion, of wolf and fox, and the birthplace as well as the hiding-place of the fierce Apache.