Showing results by narrator "Thomas A. Smith" in All Categories

Haseloff's characters embody the fundamental values - honor, duty, courage, and family - that prevailed on the American frontier and were instilled in the young Haseloff by her own "heroes", her mother and her grandmother. Her stories, in a sense, dramatize how these values endure when challenged by the adversities and cruelties of frontier existence.

When Harry French left home he was just another kid looking to make his way. But when he comes back four years later, things are different. He's different. Or at least the town thinks so. Now nobody looks him in the eye. He isn't just Harry anymore, he's the Shifter, a gunfighter who brings trouble with him wherever he goes. And as hard as Harry tries, he finds that a reputation is a lot harder to put down than a gun.

Brother Shotgun is about an old buffalo hunter whose return to the plains after the Civil War keeps being delayed by the needs of a young woman who has taken in a number of orphans.

A short story gem in a Western setting...the search of a man for beauty, and how and where he found it.

Sixkiller has come to Ringgold, Wyoming, on the trail of Bart Skillern, a vicious murderer he's been carefully stalking for weeks. But before Sixkiller can strike, Skillern takes a job with the town's duly elected mayor, a politician so corrupt that the only way to get near him is by being even more corrupt. So Sixkiller takes a job as a hired gun and sets out to destroy the mayor's gang from inside out.

Bo Creel is back at his family's Star C Ranch in Bear Creek, Texas. Along with his buddy Scratch, he's finding out that home is where the hell-raising is. A rival ranch is trying to drive the Creel family out of business, using any means necessary. For Bo, Scratch, and Bo's nephew Lee, always suckers for a pretty face, come three ladies. Two to melt hearts and one to blur the battle lines between the ranches. Desperate to raise cash and save the Star C, the Creels set out on a cattle drive to the Gulf of Mexico.

A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond. But while the prized Winchester is wandering the West - aimed, fired, battered and bartered - Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann is hunting for the outlaw who robbed the train in Texas.

Bad luck has driven half-breed Yakima Henry and Sheriff Jack Kelly into the town of Dead River during a severe mountain winter - where Yakima must weather a killer who's hell-bent on making the town as dead as its name.

Half-white, half-Cheyenne Yakima Henry has been ambushed and badly injured. Bleeding to death, he doesn't know who'll get to him first: the gunslingers or hungry wolves. Thankfully, comely widow Aubrey Coffin comes along and drags Yakima to safety. But as he heals, lawless desperados circle closer to finish the job they started by putting his innocent savior in the cross fire.

Having taken a job shotgunning a stage coach, Yakima gets tangled in corrupt town where theft, lies and murder dog him at every turn. The deeper he gets involved with the townsfolk, the harder he struggles to make things “right,” Each choice making things more dangerous and deadly.

Luke Jensen brings a body to Rio Rojo. After all, it's his job and he's going to get paid. But before he can collect the bounty for killing a killer, two notorious criminals hit the Rio Rojo bank. Now Luke can't get paid unless he catches bandit Gunner Kelly and his Apache sidekick Dog Eater. Unfortunately, a would-be man hunter is after the money-toting outlaws, too, and young Hobie McCullough is mostly a menace to himself. With a green kid to protect, renegade Mexican soldiers, and a beautiful runaway bride crossing Luke's trail, the blood hunt takes one deadly detour after another.

On the West Texas border, a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire, and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world — and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the town tamer.

In Broken Bridle, Wyoming, Jeremiah Purdy, the town's tinhorn sheriff is a college kid who wants to become governor some day. But outlaw Darius Pike couldn't care less about anyone else's ambitions. With Pike holding Broken Bridle in a bloody grip of terror, Purdy sends a desperate cry for help - to Shawn O'Brien, town tamer. Shawn's mission: ride to Wyoming and pry Broken Bridle loose from Pike's reign of fear.

In 1864, the frontier cavalry had been withdrawn to fight in the War Between the States, and the able-bodied men had enlisted to join the cause, leaving the families in the Brazos River valley very much on their own...and nearly defenseless. The Comanches and the Kiowas decided this was the perfect time to rid their land forever of the invaders who had threatened their very existence.

Lou Prophet's life as a bounty hunter has taught him one rule: You don't stop riding 'til the job is finished. Louisa Bonaventure gives that rule a whole new meaning. After seeing her family slaughtered by Dave Duvall and his Red River Gang, she and Prophet have tracked down and wiped out every last murderer - except for Duvall.

Most of bounty hunter Lou Prophet’s man-hunting jobs have been purely business transactions that he’s carried out with cool professionalism. He’s seldom seen the depravations his quarries have committed to earn a price on their heads. But when the Red River Gang raids the town of Luther Falls, Prophet witnesses it in person - and can’t do a thing to stop it. It’ll be days before anyone can organize a posse - and a small girl has been kidnapped by the cold-blooded outlaws. Prophet will have to go it alone.

Conrad Browning had money, a manservant and a mission: to find his missing children and meet them for the first time. He's come as far as Denver, dodged a bullet from a beautiful assassin, and landed in a big buy-in poker tournament against a ruthless heavy-betting cattle baron with a plan of his own - to take this city slicker into the wilderness, and hunt him like an animal. But Rance McKinney doesn't know who he is facing. The son of legendary gunman Frank Morgan, Conrad goes by the moniker of the Loner.

Once he was a young, happily married businessman. Then he lost his wife to human madness and that young man was gone, replaced by the Loner, the wandering son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan and the current occupant of a cell in Hell Gate prison. The Loner’s crime? He looked too much like an outlaw who escaped from this very prison. So the Kid teams up with a fellow inmate with an escape plan, vowing to hunt down a look-alike killer on the loose.

Framed for murder, Dewey “Mac” McKenzie is running for his life. Though Mac’s never even made a pot of coffee, he talks his way onto a cattle drive heading west — as a chuckwagon cook. Turns out he has a natural talent for turning salt pork and dried beans into culinary gold. He’s as good with a pot and pan as he is with a gun — which comes in handy on a dangerous trail drive beset with rustlers, hostile Indians, ornery weather, and deadly stampedes. Mac can hold his own with any cowboy twice his age. At least until the real showdown begins....

Like most families, the Jensens gather together to celebrate the holidays. This year, since half the clan is scattered across the American West, they've decided to split the difference and meet up in Tucson. Matt and Luke will be there, for sure, and maybe Ace and Chance, too. That leaves Sally, Preacher, and Smoke Jensen, who've reserved three seats on a westbound stage to make sure they don't miss out on the festivities. What could possibly go wrong?