Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

A harsh and deadly land... Rye Tyler was twelve when he saw his father cut down in an Indian raid. Taken in by a mysterious stranger with a taste for Shakespeare and an instinct for survival, Rye is schooled in the lessons of a hard country. Then tragedy forces him to live a loner's life in a wild land of canyons and buttes, and on dust-choked cattle trails. But his skill with a gun has earned Rye a bloody reputation he can't escape. Though he's...

Rafe Caradec - gambler, wanderer, soldier of fortune - was as hard a man as the battlefields and waterfronts of Latin America could fashion, but he was as good as his word. As Charles Rodney lay dying in a dank ship's fo'c'sle. Rafe swore to make sure that Rodney's Wyoming ranch went to his daughter, Ann. In Painted Rock, Wyoming, Caradec found land for a man to love, miles of rolling grasslands and towering mountains. He also found that one of the...

Kilkenny wasn't looking for trouble when he entered the Clifton House stage station, but trouble found him when a reckless youngster called Tetlow challenged him, drew his gun, and paid for it with his life. Looking to escape the fast-draw reputation he never wanted, Kilkenny settles in the lonely mountains of Utah, planning to ranch in a high, lush valley. Jared Tetlow is a powerful rancher who is determined to run his vast herd on the limited grasslands...

A Comanche war party kidnaps two young girls from a Texas ranch after killing the rest of the inhabitants.

Originally published in 1952, Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country opens as mejicano pistolero Martín Bredi is returning to El Puerto (El Paso) after a fourteen-year absence. Bredi carries a gun for the Chihuahuan warlord Cipriano Castro and is on Castro's business in Texas. Fourteen years earlier-shortly after the end of the Civil War-when he was the boy Martin Brady, he killed the man who murdered his father and fled to Mexico where he became Martín...

The book begins with the introduction of your standard hero; Buck Mason, a straight talking straight shooting cowboy who has a problem with Ole Gunderstrom surrounding a land dispute that has been going on for 18 years. His visit is most likely not entirely about this dispute but more to garner information about Gunderstrom's daughter Olga who he sent out East for a proper education. Buck and Olga had been friends since childhood but Ole Gunderstrom...