The collected stories of EAA "Sport Aviation" columnist Lauran Paine Jr. This is aviation from the heart.

War At Broken Bow finds Buck Carrell happily in possession of his own small ranch. But the peacefulness of his life is interrupted when a woman collapses at his door. She claims she was on the nearby stage when it was held up so Buck goes to investigate. In Taos Man, Coke Bright has been a drifter, until he encounters a small wagon train. Apaches are a threat, and Coke agrees to act as a guide. But he finds the greater threat to his life comes from inside the immigrant train. After serving five years in Yuma Prison for cattle stealing, Ray Kelly in Gunman returns to the town of Welton. No one wants him there, including Sheriff Perry Smith, but Ray Kelly has lived too long with his lonely and bitter dream of vengeance to be dissuaded. Only a bullet will stop him now...

In this trio of short stories, Lauran Paine returns with all the characteristic magic and power of his Western stories and their universal themes of learning from experience, respecting nature and changing times and attitudes. In 'Renegade Rifles', the hostile Apaches have attacked a wagon convoy at night, a time when the Apaches traditionally do not finish. 'Trouble Weather', the herd being driven from Montana to make up the beef ration for the local reservation has been unaccountably delayed, causing a possible uprising. Cattle thieves in the Old West were never easy to apprehend, but when, as in 'Rain Valley', they are protected by a mountainous terrain, a lawman such as Burt Crownover must report to wiliness and deception to gain secret access.

Widowed with a small child, CarrieLee Belleau had her daughter kidnapped by Comanches on the westbound wagon train. Accompanied by the hard-riding Windsor brothers, she set out on the dangerous trail of a Comanche band, determined to know her daughter's fate.