A rancher discovers just how many times a man's luck can hold out in this thrilling novel in the bestselling Trail Drive Series After struggling for years to work a raw-patch ranch in the arid flatlands of Texas, young Mitchell Newland learns that his herd of scrubby range cattle will fetch ten times their local price if they're driven to Montana. He strikes a one-sided deal with the devil, neighboring rancher Corliss Bilks, to back his play with cattle, men, and horses. The trail brims with hellish hardship: prairie fire, stampede, flooded rivers, hailstorms, rattlers, sickness, long, broiling days and frigid nights. Halfway to Montana, range pirates and a rogue Apache war party close in. Mitch and the boys fight, grim and helpless, watching as their herd is driven westward in a cloud of dust and cackling laughter. Cut down to two bloodied men, Mitch collapses, far too late, and admits the old man has won the bet. But salvation in the form of a...

Highly educated—and totally clueless—young Fletcher Ralston inherits a brothel and his thieving father's deadly enemy in this suspenseful new novel in Ralph Compton's Gunfighter series. Young dandy Fletcher Ralston's privileged life of education and ease in the East comes to an abrupt end when he's summoned to the dried-up Wyoming town of Promise to inherit a run-down bordello and a lifetime of debts. The old woman he's known only via correspondence as his "aunt" is in truth the madam of the brothel. After their meeting, she is found with her throat slit, and Fletcher is suspect number one. But the old lady's paramour, crusty Gunnar Tibbs, believes in his innocence and sets about mentoring the tenderfoot. Fletcher is a quick study with the revolver, and the unlikely pair set out to clear Fletcher's name and track down the real killer. What they don't know is that someone is stalking them in return: Skin Varney, the notorious, unsavory brute his...