Jennifer Vandermeer hated Kansas. With all her heart, she wished that she'd never left the dull security of Ohio, had never let her husband, Walter, take her from the order and civilization of the East. There was no preacher in Four Corners, Kansas, so Seth Baker, at the behest of his wife, improvised the words. Jennifer, her two young children, and a small group of strangers, listened as they clustered in a spot freshly scythed around the rectangular pit. Walter had not been long among us before he was taken away, but, uh, he was a good, uh, farmer and a good, uh, man... It just didn't make sense. Jennifer had told Walter over and over: "It's ludicrous, neither of us know the first thing about farming." But Walter had been adamant, and they came to Kansas. Now Walter was dead. And Jennifer was marooned in a sea of grass with a farm to take care of and two small children to raise. Where would she go? What would she do? It would be harder than she ever imagined. As she stood over her husband's fresh grave she couldn't know that her life would become a war every day. War against the elements, war against the will of the land, and most of all, a war, every minute of every day, against herself and her fears... For every glorious legend of the Old West there are a thousand workaday stories of the boundless persistence and courage that turned a wilderness into civilization. Jennifer Vandermeer and the story of her hardship, disasters and triumphs, is one of the real stories of how the West was won.

Pinto Lowery never wanted anything more than the chance to raise a family and find a piece of land he could call his own. But after fighting in the Civil War, he couldn't settle, and instead drifted all over the West breaking mustangs, haunted by the ghosts of his fallen comrades. All that changed in a flash. There didn't seem to be a good reason to leave mustanging to go work on the farm of Mister Tully Oakes while Oakes travels north on a cattle drive. The man had a reputation for being stingy, ornery and contrary. But when Pinto met Elsie Oakes and her young children, an old yearning stirs in his heart and Pinto decided to take Tully's offer, Time goes by quickly when the work is hard. Yet, while the corn is being harvested and everyone is around the fire at night, Pinto can almost fool himself into believing he's found a loving family, and the first secure home he's known since boyhood. But the day of Tully's return looms and the Hannigan gang has taken to raiding the local ranches-imperiling Pinto Lowery's simple dreams of the future.

Lee Strate has been shot and left for dead by two men who stole every penny of his $5000 fortune. His life is saved by Jack, a freed black man who agrees to help him track down his money. Heading to Galveston, they discover the thieves are working for the powerful Colonel Benson. Lee and Jack discover that Colonel Benson is involved in agitating racial tension among Galveston s dock workers, the Cotton Jammers. Telling the white workers that the blacks are trying to take over, and telling the blacks that the whites are taking unfair advantage of them, Benson has worked both parties into a frenzy. The unrest is likely to come to a head just when President Grant is due in town.The hunt for the thieves becomes deadly, and Lee and Jack begin to realize the shattering implications of the sinister political plot that has enmeshed them all."

When Ryan came riding back into Tularosa people gawped in disbelief. The power-players in town wanted him out of town whether by horse or by casket. His old friends welcomed him, but their faces were shadowed with doubt and hard questions. Why could he make it back to town to see his sister s killer hang when he couldn t be bothered to stay and support her against the treacherous Kane brothers when she was still alive? It doesn t take Ryan long to realize that Billy Kane, who stands to hang, is not his sister s killer. He focuses his attention on the men who first ran him out of town, certain that they know the killer s identity. No matter how long it takes, Ryan is determined to avenge his sister s death and bring her murderer to justice. This time he s not going to allow the powerful forces that control most everything in Tularosa hide the truth."

Everyone suffers from the trial and tribulation of life. This is a story of a man determined to keep a promise made to his dying wife, the greatest tribulation of all. Tyrell Carson is forced to travel thousands of miles and endure years of loneliness only to suddenly be thrown into troubles not of his own making. But he is a survivor that protects the innocent while solving a mystery long forgotten. And perhaps, falling in love again.

Most folks would not trifle with the Hart brothers. Such folks walked. Some folks did not know better. They are planted-not so deep as to keep the cold of the high country from their bones, but deep enough to keep the wolves from their place of repose. That would do. They were well known as gun men, as shootists, as bounty hunters. Their first loyalty was for each other. Their honor was kept for themselves. Wherever they rode the people knew them and their deadly skills. The Hart brothers were going to the Cedar City Rendezvous. The territory was infested with renegades and outlaws; nearly all of them far less honorable and far more rapacious than the very capable Hart brothers. Death and rape and robbery seemed to come out of the ground with the rippling heat like surf against a shore. There seemed to be little that the law and decent citizens could do to stem the tide . . . Until the sheriff of Cedar City, Utah Territory, decided to let the criminal element take care of itself and sent out invitations to the Rendezvous. Hundreds of killers showed up. "You are all here by invitation. There be five miles 'tween here and town. The object is for you to get from here to there . . . alive enough to claim the fortune in gold. Those of you what make it that far will get an equal share. And the Governor's unconditional pardon goes with the loot." A murmur ran thorough the great company armed to its blackened teeth, Some of the shootists thought of saloons and every painted woman between Memphis and Frisco. The Hart Brothers thought of fertile farm land where a body could take root and grow along with crops and children: "Men, the rules be simple: Every man for hisself from here to the edge of town. You have until I get to town to find your place and cover. When I signal with my rifle, this shoot starts!" Before the sheriff was out of sight, the throng exploded in all directions toward rocky hills, scrub brush cover, and small box canyons. For fifteen long minutes there was silence. Then a shot rolled lazily through the stifling heat. A heartbeat later, the thin air erupted with musketry. In the first moments of the Cedar City Rendezvous, a dozen men fell from their saddles and dropped to the salty ground.

THE DEAD MAN S JOURNEY Journada del Muerte, the locals called it: the blistering ocean of sand and sage between the Rio Grande River to the west and the Sacramento mountain range to the east. The bones of men and horses had bleached in the mile-high desert for three hundred years. Spanish conquistadors were the first white men to explore this new furnace of the Southeastern New Mexico Territory and the first to perish. In the thin air, the riders coming down the mountain were sharply etched against the blue sky. Steam, blowing out of the ice-encrusted nostrils of their mounts and their two pack horses, surrounded the horsemen in a white veil. Descending the eastern face of the Sacramento mountains, the horses walked slowly and painfully on cracked hooves. The icy earth offered only a steep path paved with shards of glass; blood seeped around well-worn iron horseshoes. When the riders looked to the sky, they saw that the white sun would stay high enough for them to make Fort Stanton, ten miles into the valley. The riders knew the trail since boyhood. Words were not wasted in country where a man s mouth would crack and bleed like his horse s hooves. Beyond the fort lay the clapboard settlement of Lincoln. When Grady Rourke died, his sons, Sean, Patrick, and Liam, came back to claim the family land . . . What was left of it. It was January, 1878, when the Rourke brothers came back to this hard and dangerous land. They thought they were coming home. What they didn t know was that they were about to become part of a vicious struggle for power. And that they would be forced to choose sides with either John Tunstall and Alexander McSween or J. J. Dolan and Sheriff William Brady. The battle would quickly become the infamous Lincoln County War a dirty little war with no rules, no heroes, and no happy endings. Douglas Savage, the acclaimed author of Cedar City Rendezvous and Highpockets has taken the historical facts surrounding the Lincoln County War and its fascinating characters, and fashioned one of the most readable and revealing tales of the American frontier.

Franklin Pierce was president of the United States in 1855, the Mexican War had just ended; the horrors of the American Civil War had not yet begun. The last of the free spirits known as the Mountain Men were securing their place in the legends of the frontier. Among these fierce adventurers was a man who called himself Highpockets. Into the harsh wilderness Highpockets had come to escape the soot of the cities and the terrible memories of war; with nothing but the strength of his heart and hands he had carved out a life of freedom in the nearly inaccessible high places of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn of his days Highpockets stumbled across a half-frozen, half-dead immigrant boy who had wandered in the snow and ice-terrified after having been separated from the wagon train carrying his Eastern European family across the vast new world. Highpockets called the boy Cub and took him to the wilderness domain the old man called My Mountain. There, for one long winter, they lived together; the young boy learned a new language and a way of life that he'd never even imagined existed. By the end of the winter, the old man knew that Cub had learned everything he needed to know to survive in a land as dangerous as it was awesomely beautiful. It would have to be enough and more than enough . . . for at the end of that winter Highpockets had agreed to face the council of his old enemy, Painted Elk, to atone for the murder of the chief's son. Both Cub and Highpockets would be judged by the council of Elders . . . and both would learn that justice in the high places was both fair . . . and deadly.

Did you ever wounder what your ancestor's lives were like? This is an account of an actual family that homesteaded in Nebraska in the19th century. They struggled through a prairie fire, blizzards, dust storms and opposition to their very existence. Although they lived on borrowed money most of the time and squeezed every penny, they were able to increase their land holdings. The original 160 acre homestead evolved into a ranch of more than7,000 acres 60 years later. Actual local area history is woven into this family's lives during six decades. Such as the time Buffalo Bill went to Rushville to recruite Indians for his Wild West Shows. Included is the effect upon the family of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. The Furman and Jackson families are true. Also, Buffalo Bill, Jules Sandoz, and Jim Asay were actual people. All other names are fictitious.