Louis L'Amour

Early in Louis L'Amour's career, he wrote a number of novel-length stories for "pulp" western magazines. "I lived with my characters so closely that their lives were still as much a part of me as I was of them long after the issues in which they appeared went out of print," he said. "I wanted to...

Tom Kedrick is hired by a financial syndicate to run off a gang of vagrants and outlaws who are occupying a sizable strip of land that the syndicate has filed, claiming it is unusable swamp. To Kedrick's dismay, these "vagrants and outlaws" turn out to be hard working ranchers and farmers who...

"Ross Hardy had made his decision. He sat in the middle of all he owned, a splendid Appaloosa gelding, a fine California saddle, a .44 Winchester rifle, and two walnut-stocked Colt .44 pistols. These were his all. It was a life that had left him rich in experience, but poor in goods of the world...

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it". The two stories in this collection provide a good sample of the kinds of people he had in mind. In "Ride, You Tonto Raiders", Matt Sabre is a young...