Lauran Paine: 16 books

Two Western novellas by the incomparable Lauran Paine, a titan of the Western genre. “Tomahawk Meadow” tells the story of Ladd Buckner, a stranger who arrives in a small town in Arizona Territory. Buckner buys the local saddle and harness shop, but when the townspeople recognize his stitch...

Two tales of action, adventure, and the Wild West from a founding master of the genre, Lauran Paine. In "The Crescent Scar," one man trying his best to stay on the straight and narrow is Sadler Carrel. Once upon a time he was a notorious outlaw known as the Gila River Kid, but he...

Sheriff Doyle Bannion tries to keep the peace in Perdition Wells, Texas, when a shooting claims the life of an innocent bystander. When a shooting takes place at the Union Eagle Saloon, Dale McAfee, foreman of John Rockland's mighty Texas Star Ranch, kills a range rider working for Clell Durham,...

The Wyoming territory is vast, rich with grasslands, and largely lawless. So when a conflict arises over whose herd gets to graze in those grasslands, then it's more likely to be settled with a shootout than a lawyer. The cattlemen believed their cows ought to have free grazing. It had been...

It was dusk when Todd Duncan sighted the man and his camp at a small oasis on the edge of the desert. Duncan, on his way to New Mexico to find work, knew better than to barge into a stranger's camp. After riding in and dismounting, he decided to make coffee before waking the stranger. When he called...

Kit Butler and Lige Turner are weathered trackers-trappers who once lived among the Dakota people as brothers, learning their language, their land, and their way of life. Now, with the fur trade dwindling, they find themselves guides for a wagon train-a group of emigrants leaving behind the comforts...

Ryan Shanley prefers to be called Shan. It's not much, but it helps put some distance between his life during and after serving in the Union army. And he'll put even more distance between the two once he arrives in the Wyoming Territory, where he has a land grant for two square miles. On the...

Five days ago, the blowing up of the express office safe in Burnt Timbers, Montana, had gone off without a hitch for the four members of the Buck Streeter gang, netting them $28,000. Since then they have taken refuge in an abandoned shack on a plateau above the town of Brigham in northern Wyoming....

Jackson Miggs was a loner who wintered under the Ute Peak in his log cabin. He liked people well enough, but didn't care much for crowds. He even tolerated the cowmen like Hyatt Tolman who used the high meadows around Ute Peak to graze his herd-even when the animals cropped the forage too closely...

Samuel Patton lost his wife to lung fever two years ago. Now, suffering from lung fever himself and closer to eternity every day, he is traveling south through the mountains with his small son and daughter, hoping somewhere in this savage land he can find a good home for them before time runs out....

The small town of Ballester owes its prosperity to the confluence of three big ranches-Snowshoe, Mexican Hat, and Rainbow. Its single lawman, Deputy Sheriff Percy Whittaker, known as Perc, didn't have to deal with much lawbreaking other than the occasional drunk on a Saturday night. Until a drifter...

In the middle of a harsh desert where water is the town’s most valuable resource, an accused killer runs to escape the man who is trying to kill him. Troy Warfield is on the run. He is entering hostile New Mexico territory, where the heat sucks moisture from the earth and beats down the weak....

Forced to take a precipitous route off the rimrocks and down into an unknown valley to escape certain death by four men pursuing him, Pete Knight, a cowhand seeking a job, sees a town ahead in the distance. If he can just make it to that town, he believes he will be safe. Little does he know that...

The massacre at Fort Mims is what spurred young Davy Crockett to leave his family and become a volunteer scout in the military campaign between American militias and the Creek Indians. It was while serving in this capacity that Crockett earned his reputation as a first-rate scout, which added to his...