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 - - When Madeline Hammond stepped from the train at El Cajon, New Mexico, it was nearly midnight, and her first impression was of a huge dark space of cool, windy emptiness, strange and silent, stretching away under great blinking white stars. Miss, there's no one to meet you, said the conductor, rather anxiously. I wired my brother, she replied. "The train being so late - perhaps he grew tired of waiting. He will be here presently. But, if he should not come - surely I can find a hotel?" There's lodgings to be had. Get the station agent to show you. If you'll excuse me - this is no place for a lady like you to be alone at night. It's a rough little town - mostly Mexicans, miners, cowboys. And they carouse a lot. Besides, the revolution across the border has stirred up some excitement along the line. Miss, I guess it's safe enough, if you -

This is a story of love and struggle in 1876 America about a family nearly penniless traveling west on the Oregon trail in search of a better life like countless thousands of families who went before them. This is a story about the Leland family and how they interact with their fellow travelers and how they deal with and overcome the harsh realities of the Trail. The arguments and violent tempers within their group, the violence they are subjected to by others, and the insecurity they must live with after the massacre of the 7th Cavalry.

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 - - Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to these of my readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may not be amiss. He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he has devoted practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild animals. It has been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy and indomitable purpose to a singular passion, almost an obsession, to capture alive, not to kill. He has caught and broken the will of every well-known wild beast native to western North America. Killing was repulsive to him. He even disliked the sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessity compelled him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffalo to the caravans crossing the plains. At last, seeing that the extinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his rifle over a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species. For ten years he labored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for which the West gave him fame, and the name Preserver of the American Bison.

As I grew up hearing stories of my grandfather and his adventures in life, I wrote a novel and called it West by Bullwhip. It was historical fiction but many of the life stories about my grandfather, James Alburn Knight, later picking up the name Jack, and his family were true happenings. Bullwhip Justice has many of the same characters but is total fiction. My publisher for the first book said I had failed to put romance in the book and needed to write about a love interest for my main character. So we now have Bullwhip Justice and a love affair that carries our main character on highs and lows of several magnitudes. It fulfills the meaning behind the title. Jack continues his skillful use of the bullwhip and finds the use helpful in reducing the death rate in the growing west saving the final justice as the perfect place to display the diversity of the bullwhip.

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 may seem strange to you that out of all the stories I heard on the Rio Grande I should choose as first that of Buck Duane - outlaw and gunman. But, indeed, Ranger Coffee's story of the last of the Duanes has haunted me, and I have given full rein to imagination and have retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law - the old border days-therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, "Shore is 'most as bad an' wild as ever " In the North and East there is a popular idea that the frontier of the West is a thing long past, and rememb-ered now only in stories. As I think of this I remember Ranger Sitter when he made that remark, while he grimly stroked an unhealed bullet wound. And I remember the giant Vaughn, that typical son of stalwart Texas, sitting there quietly with bandaged head, his thoughtful eye boding ill to the outlaw who had ambushed him. Only a few months have passed since then - when I had my memorable sojourn with you - and yet, in that short time, Russell and Moore have crossed the Divide, like Rangers.

Using real historical events and places adventures are woven into the life of Luke, a fictional young boy that carries him through tragedies and successes in the 1880s. Orphaned at the age of 13, he rides west on his one eyed pony, a Sharps Rifle, and encounters Indians and cattle drovers. At a buffalo wallow his pony is killed and he obtains a large black horse. Luke continues west in search of the horse's true owner. At the Rio Grande River, assistance is provided by a Padre who sends Luke on west to the Bar-C ranch to return the black horse. With successful encounters at Socorro and Magdalena, NM, Luke becomes a ranch hand, where his Sharps is used on rustlers, mountain lions, and Indians.

Margaret is not a conventional woman of the early-nineteenth century. She's not interested in pretty dresses and tea parties, but instead longs for adventure in the great outdoors. Margaret convinces her father, William, to seek opportunity in the fur trade business.

They embark on a journey that follows the Louis and Clark route along the Missouri River into Blackfoot country to trade for beaver skins. As she gains freedom from the social structures that bind her in the East, she doesn't anticipate the changes this new life brings. The travelers face an array of challenges from the weather, wild animals, and the native Indian tribes.

Margaret thrives in this wild country, where she catches sight of Taima, the Thunder Horse, who refuses to be caught. Together with Night Hawk, a warrior in the Black Horse Band of the Kainah Blackfoot, they both seek to capture this beautiful, wild horse. Night Hawk believes the elusive Taima will fulfill his dreams. He doesn't expect his plans-or his life-to be complicated by a Long Knife woman with similar dreams.

Margaret, Night Hawk, and Taima gain honor and strength from each other-a strength that is shared with the Black Horse Band-providing a link to the future that could have been.

Since the late 1870s, travelers coming out of Mexico have whispered of Mateo Madero, the captain of a gang of mysterious outlaws - bandits who prey upon bandits, killers whom other killers fear. Statements in old Pinkerton files tell of this shadowy chief, reportedly wounded in body and spirit, who suddenly vanished from the accounts of men. In the Arizona Territory, sixteen-year-old Collie Callaghan is befriended by a scarred stranger who buys her a beautiful horse and touches her heart in ways she cannot comprehend. After he disappears, Collie is swept up into a terrible conflict. A cattle baron is fighting all those around him for land, power, and the future. Range detectives, highwaymen, and murderers are enlisted in the battle as the cattleman strives for dominance over desperate ranchers in a war without a quarter. "Rider in the Rain" is the searing tale of a young girl's recovery of a lost past and a stricken bandit's final quest for redemption.

The light plane loaded with two million dollars worth of cocaine drifted through the night sky over the Chihuahuan desert searching for a lighted strip in the mountains near the Texas border. The pilot spotted the strip lined with crude lights. He made a low pass over the area, set the plane down and taxied to the end of the strip where two vans were located. He killed the engine and stepped out of the plane. Two men stood near his door. He saw the two men fall to the ground and then he fell to the ground - all three very dead. Several armed men dressed in black rushed the two vans. Within seconds, several men, again dressed in black, rushed the plane and removed the cocaine from the cargo area. Another man slid into the pilot's seat, fired the engine up and flew the plane into Texas.

Others in the dope cartel had been killed or captured in the little village of Santa Rosa on the Rio Grande, 18 miles south of the strip. These actions had been practiced many times. It was near the end of a carefully planned exercise to rid the village of the deadly cartel forever. It went like clockwork. The bad guys lose and the good guys win.

Sam DeLeon had planned this, with a few of his friends from the agency they worked for, and the men of the village. Sam was retired from a big city P.D. in Texas and had fallen in love with a woman that lived in the village. The cartel people were very cruel to the villagers. Sam and his people put a stop to their activities in Santa Rosa.

Further investigation revealed that there was more than dope on that plane, much more.