Showing results by author "William Johnstone" in All Categories

Smoke Jensen couldn't have cared less that a range war had erupted in Montana. But his cousin Fae was stuck right in the middle of a hundred-gun showdown that was about to explode in bullets and blood. When Smoke strapped on his Colts and went to Fae's aid, he knew the deck was stacked against him. Even when he was joined by four old friends, it looked like it was going to be his final stand. But if anyone could buck the odds, it was Smoke Jensen, the last mountain man.

They struck in a pack, in the dead of night. They had crept in like thieves, like the cowards they were...but it wasn't robbery they had in mind. It was something much darker. Smoke Jensen was buying cattle 100 miles away from his Colorado ranch when he got the news. Drawing two horses from the remuda, he saddled up, rode off...and didn't stop until he reached his wife's side. She had been shot three times, and lay close to death. Smoke Jensen knew the outlaws had come to kill him. He wouldn't give them a second chance. He was going after them. And he wasn't taking any prisoners.

Vance Brewster is a hardworking young cowboy. Stovepipe and Wilbur are two new ranch hands working at his side. And all three are caught up in a brewing, trigger-happy Montana range war between the Rafter M and Three Rivers. Then the fury suddenly explodes - in a hail of gunfire, the three men must show their hands: they’re all hiding their true identities. With Vance falling in love with the daughter of the Three Rivers manager, and Stovepipe and Wilbur paid by a tycoon who needs the violence to stop, all three are in mortal danger.

On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Smoke Jensen: The Beginning follows the Jensen clan during these volatile years, from Civil War battles to border state raids to the kind of frontier justice achieved only by bullets and blood.

Lee Slater and his gang of lowlife desperadoes didn't know that Smoke Jensen had given up his gunslinger status to become a family man. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble was their first mistake. Shooting Smoke's wife Sally was their second. Chances are, they're not going to live to make a third.

After a lifetime of robbing banks and holding up trains, Jimmy “Slash” Braddock, and Melvin “Pecos Kid” Baker are ready to call it quits — though not completely by choice. Sold out by their old gang, Slash and Pecos have to bust out of jail and pull one last job to finance their early retirement....

He calls himself The King. Once a respected professor, he was ruined by scandal. Now, he rules his own “country”—an area of western territory where an army of outlaws enforce his laws. Any town he claims as his own must pay “taxes,” collected from bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. When he learns that President Rutherford B. Hayes and General William Tecumseh Sherman are venturing into the far west on a tour of the nation, The King devises a plan to kidnap America’s leaders and expand his empire.

Like a murderous plague, a band of cutthroats and criminals, led by prison escapees from New Mexico, rages through West Texas. They're slaughtering everyone in their path: men, women, and children. They struck at Saragosa. Now they've taken over the town of Boracho. The Dallas newspapers call them the Kingdom Come Gang. In Chugwater, Wyoming, Duff McCallister calls them his enemy. Because one of their victims was family.

Jonas Madigan is dying. He spent his life taming towns and upholding justice across the west with no regrets. Along the way, Madigan took the measure of good men like Smoke Jensen, who has traveled to Salt Lick, Texas to pay his respects to the lawman. But when bandits gun down the small town’s current marshal—and Smoke sends the killers to Boot Hill—Madigan asks his friend to wear the badge and keep the peace. Turns out the bandits were members of Bishop’s Mauraders, a gang of trigger-happy thieves led by the vicious Snake Bishop—and they’ve set their sights on Salt Lick.

If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen hates, it’s a man who fights dirty. And no one fights dirtier than a politician. Especially a lying, cheating, no-good grifter like Senator Rex Underhill. Luckily, with another election coming up, this senatorial snake in the grass has some serious competition: Smoke’s old friend, Sheriff Monte Carson. Carson’s an honest man, and he’s got Smoke’s full support. But Underhill’s got support, too: a squad of hired guns ready to hit the campaign trail - and stain it red with blood.

In Dale, Colorado, any cowboy with good sense knows better than to step through the batwings of the Plowshare Saloon - and any sheep-herder crazy enough to belly up to the bar at the Red Dog is ordering the last taste of whiskey he’ll ever lift to his lips. The town of Dale is heading for an all-out war that will pit father against son and brother against brother.

Scottish cattleman Duff MacCallister staked a claim for his life in America—and reserves a righteous anger for those who break the law in this smoking six-gun shootout from National Bestselling Authors William W. and J.A. Johnstone.

It's fur trapping season and Preacher is about to discover the Rocky Mountain trail holds more than wild game - it's also infested with murderers and trail trash quick to deceive, steal, and hunt Preacher down. Among them are Jebediah Druke, his ruthless band of killers, and most terrifying of all, the barbaric renegade Crow warrior known as Blood Eye. When Preacher shows up and gets on their bad side, he stirs up a clash that could lead to a brutal and bloody battle.

Orphaned at the age of seven and adopted by Indians, Jami Ian MacCallister grew into a man more at ease in the wilderness than among men. But when the westward strike drove him across the Arkansas Territory into Texas, he finally found himself a home — in the middle of a bloody war. Texans like Jim Bowie and Sam Houston were waging a fierce struggle against Santa Ana’s Mexican army and Jami MacCallister made the perfect scout for the fledgling volunteer force.

Thanks to a new line, Duff MacCallister can transport his 250 Black Angus cattle herd with ease by Iron Horse instead of enduring a two-day traildrive. But the day after depositing $15,000 in his Cheyenne account, Duff learns that bank president Jeremy Brinks embezzled every cent - totalling $65,000 - and then, guilt-ridden, committed suicide. The widow Brinks doesn't believe her husband was a thief or that he killed himself. Duff agrees. And after getting an appointment as Territorial Marshal, he's aiming his barrel at putting every double-crossing lawman.

For Frank Morgan, a reunion with his estranged son brings back bittersweet memories of another time and place. Conrad Morgan is an Eastern businessman trying to build a railroad through an untamed corner of New Mexico Territory. Even though Frank has revenge-hungry killers on his trail, his kin needs him now. So with a gun-toting, hard-loving beauty named Rebel by their side, father and son ride straight into a pitched battle with hired killers and furious Apache warriors. It’s a firestorm more treacherous and evil than Frank Morgan has ever faced.

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal, and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

It starts as a happy reunion between Preacher and his fellow trappers in a peaceful Indian village. But it ends swiftly in death and destruction when a rival tribe attacks the village, slaughters some of Preacher’s Crow and mountain man friends, and carries off the women and children as prisoners. Preacher was off hunting when it happened. Now he’s teaming up with old friend Lorenzo and half-breed Tall Dog, to get the prisoners back—and get revenge. But the road to justice is paved with some very dark omens. And the trail leads to the baddest place on God’s good earth.

Smoke Jensen never would have come back to the gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana, if it hadn't been for his sister Janey's estate. That isn't the only thing the Last Mountain Man has to settle, however. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove, the man who owns Red Light and who is trying to lay claim to Janey's land. All that stands between Cosgrove and the land is an avenging gunslinger with a blazing .44 - and a good reason to use it.

Three weeks before Christmas, the little town of Chug Water in Wyoming Territory is stunned by a brutal crime. The mayor's family has been slaughtered in cold blood on their ranch outside of Raw Hide Butte. As the townsfolk gather to pay their last respects, Duff MacCallister saddles up to go after the killers. He returns with two outlaws - a cold-blooded, nasty pair of snakes, Jesse and T. Bob Cave. But the day before they're sentenced to hang, the Cave brothers escape their fate...