Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

It was no work for a woman. That's what they told Mary Breydon when she came to manage a rundown stagecoach station on the Cherokee Trail. But Mary had no choice. Her fine Virginia home burned to ashes in the Civil War and her husband was brutally shot down on the way to Colorado. She needed to make a new beginning for herself and her young daughter on the raw frontier. Isolated in an untamed land, their life at the station was achingly hard and they...

The world's greatest silver strike brings together a loner named Val and Grita, a beautiful actress.

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives...but one man held their future hostage. Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford's captives were the Traven's sister and Dal's...

The rare letters Tell Sackett received always had trouble inside. And the terse note from his cousin Logan is no exception. Logan faces starvation or a hanging if Tell can’t drive a herd of cattle from Kansas to British Columbia before winter. To get to Logan, he must brave prairie fires, buffalo stampedes, and Sioux war parties. But worse trouble waits, for a mysterious enemy shadows Sackett’s every move across the Dakotas and the Canadian Rockies....

Poor, orphaned at thirteen, Otis Chancy left the Tennessee mountains with nothing but a will to work, a drive to succeed, and the backbone for a fight. So when a fight comes his way, along with a chance to buy a herd of cattle and start his own spread, nineteen-year-old Chancy doesn't hesitate. He guns down a man who'd been using a sheriff's badge to justify cattle thieving. But when a mysterious woman betrays him, he will find himself stalked by...

When beautiful Angelina Foley presents Tom Radigan with a Spanish grant and claims ownership of his land, he realizes hes up against a cunning and deadly opportunist. Foley wants him off Vache Creek immediately, and with three thousand head of cattle, an outfit of hardcase gunfighters, and winter coming on, she is unwilling to take no for an answer.But Radigan has worked four hard years building up his ranch. Fighting for it-and, if he has to, killing...

Considine and Pete Runyon had once been friends, back in the days when both were cowhands. But when Runyon married the woman Considine loved, the two parted ways. Runyon settled down and became a sheriff. Considine took up robbing banks. Now Considine is planning a raid on the bank at Obaro, a plan that will pit him against Runyon . . . and lead to riches or suicide. The one thing he never counted on was meeting a strong, beautiful woman and her stubborn...

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men--men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess. Yet bandits were only part of McKaskel's worries. For a mysterious stranger, Con Vallian, had appeared...

Young Tom Shanaghy left New York City after he made one too many enemies. He landed in a small Kansas town that had big dreams, no name, and the need for an honest lawman. Now all he could do was hope that his years on the Bowery had left him with the smarts he needed to keep himself alive.