Todhunter Ballard

In "Dead Man's Gold," Ken Gregory comes upon a lynching and is able to disperse the mob. Sam Petnell, whom the mob had unjustly accused of horse stealing, tells Ken he knows the location of a buried cache of gold on the Box-T ranch. Then Sam is murdered on the trail... In the title story, Ray Donovan, adopted as a child and raised by Aunt Kate Donovan on the Box D Ranch, returns to do a favor for his cousin and becomes embroiled in a bitter right-of-way...

"In "Drifter's Choice," Wade Pierce has no particular ambition and a reputation for irresponsibility. No one is more surprised than Pierce when he learns he has inherited his dead uncle's controlling interest in a small bank. When he is confronted by Sam Leavitt, who tries to force him to sell out, Pierce becomes stubborn. But he is not a gunman and he isn't prepared to commit murder. In "High Desert," María Mulrooney is held a virtual prisoner in...

"From the time she crossed the Rio Grande, it was plain that Ann Royer was going to cause some changes in Del Rio, Texas. Bringing the news of her parents' murder and the destruction of their ranch in Mexico, she had ridden alone all the way to Texas to lay claim to the giant Twin R ranch ostensibly belonging to her uncle Phil. Ann wasn't alone in wanting the Twin R. Old man Pease, owner of the neighboring Lazy P, was anxious to double the size of...

Confederate guerrillas disguised as Indians are carrying out vicious and deadly attacks on stagecoach stations between Kansas and Colorado, trying to stir up trouble and cut the West in half. And the only man who could stop them is Captain Jack Price of the Union Army - a prisoner of the Rebs ...

"When Cap Lennox was mysteriously murdered, it meant two things to hard-bitten Joe Condon. Joe was now town marshal, and he didn't have a friend left in the world. He would never get along with the respectable townspeople who paid his wages. And his kind of men -- the men who rode the trail and came into town looking for drink, women, and poker -- were now his enemies. But Joe had to stay. First it was just to find Cap's murderer and clear his name....