検索キーワード： 著者 "C.J. Petit" すべてのカテゴリー

As he wrote Horace Kirby’s will, James Spencer understood how unusual and difficult it would be to ensure that his client’s wishes were met. The wealthy life-long bachelor’s only sister had died eight years earlier. Before her husband had died, he’d left her with a daughter who was now almost seventeen years old. The girl couldn’t inherit until she reached eighteen and the precautions that Horace had included would prevent anyone from taking advantage of her until she came of age.

Sheriff Jed Morgan thinks his life is about to get a lot quieter when he gets voted out of office in a bought-and-paid for election rigged by his family’s long-time nemesis Arnie Williams. But when the new railroad comes to town and Jed’s neighbors, the Crawfords at the Bar C ranch, have their water poisoned and Arnie Williams’ hands try to stampede their cattle, Jed begins to find that his lawman days were far from over.

The sky was ablaze with shooting stars. Everyone had marveled at the sight, but as Zack Dyer watched and wondered what they meant, he heard a voice telling him why they had appeared. He suddenly knew what they signified and that he had been chosen to lead the faithful away from here to a place where they would be safe from what was to come. He must show them the path to a haven from destruction.

Axel, Ella and her parents boarded their Denver-bound train. And as it was the first time that they’d experienced the incredible speed of riding the rails, his fiancée and his future in-laws were anxiously waiting for the engineer to open the locomotive’s throttle. As Axel watched Ella stare through the window in anticipation of seeing the outside world whiz by, he believed all of the danger and uncertainty were over. After Mortimer Peel’s trial, he and Ella would get married, start a family, and he’d continue his work as a private investigator and trouble shooter.

Eleven-year-old Axel Nielsen and his ten-year-old girlfriend Elsa Johannsen were happily chatting as they walked away from Winfield, Kansas’ one-room school. But their cheery conversation quickly ended when they saw Elsa’s father striding towards them with a somber look on his face. Axel thought Mister Johannsen was going to scold Elsa. But when he noticed a large cloud of black smoke rising into the air above his family’s farm, he realized her father wasn’t going to chastise Elsa. He was coming to give him horrifying news about his parents and two brothers.

Ted Shepard had seen many deaths over his ten years as a bounty hunter and then as a United States Deputy Marshal, but none had come close to affecting him as much as this one. He didn't know if he could go on any longer and sunk into an almost suicidal depression. But on his return to his hometown of Wilmore, Kansas, it only took a very short visit by the one person capable of healing his emotional turmoil to restore him to the same person he had been before and to get him back to his job.

Tabby rode out of the Slant 6 after having spent more than four years working on the big spread. He wasn’t mad or even disappointed. It was just the way of life for a cowhand. The last three years of low prices for cattle had finally forced the boss to sell too much of his big herd to keep so many men. It also meant it would be difficult for him to find a new job. Being a cowhand was all Tabby knew, and it was a life that he enjoyed. He had no real responsibilities and unlike most of the other men, he had no ambitions to have his own ranch or even becoming a foreman.

When aging cowboy Gus Matthews gets fired from Rocking-C ranch for laying out the mean-spirited, know-nothing foreman, he heads north for Oklahoma, where he finds work with the Aronsons, an elderly couple whose ranch has seen better days. What should be easy work for kindly employers quickly turns sour when Gus discovers that the neighboring Slash-M ranch have been rustling the Aronsons’ cattle. Even worse, Gus becomes the corrupt sheriff’s main suspect in a string of violent crimes plaguing the county.

The loud roar snapped Mrs. Doyle from her sleep, and she quickly slid from her bedroll, stepped to the tents flap, and pulled it aside seeing a bear standing on its hind legs just a few feet from her. What made it more horrifying was what she didn't see. The camp behind the bear was empty. She dropped the flap and turned to her the frightened boy standing behind her. He looked at his equally terrified nanny unaware that they had been abandoned to die in the wilderness.

As Carl sat astride his roan gelding and stared at Pine Bluffs, he knew that his days of punching cattle were over. The long drives across the West were dying now that the railroads had crisscrossed the Plains. Ironically, his last formal education had given him the skills and knowledge to help build those railroads, and now he’d finally put them to use. His short-term plan of spending a quiet night or two in Pine Bluffs would soon be altered by a simmering man-made volcano in the mountains of central Wyoming at a mine that provided the coal for the railroad’s locomotives.

Mattie Foster had made a terrible mistake. She had left Missouri and come to Green River, Wyoming to find her father; a father who was not the man that she even knew. Now, she was being held by two men against her will. The man who was determined to find her was a rancher. A rancher with a debt to repay.

After five long years in the army, First Lieutenant John Flynn was finally being mustered out and would soon be going home to the family he hadn’t even heard from in all that time. But when he rode to the family home, he made two shocking discoveries: his family was gone, and he had been declared dead by the army four years earlier. He left to cross the plains of Nebraska to find his family, but he would find so much more.

Despite the large number of saloons and ever-changing population, Joe and Faith were comfortable living in Idaho City. They had a nice home, and hoped to raise Sam and Katie in the town even after the gold was gone. But those expectations were dashed when a sequence of unrelated events forced them to leave Idaho Territory.

As the temperatures rose, so did the surge of fortune hunters. They also brought more trouble to Boise County and Idaho City, so Sheriff Fulmer added more deputies to keep the peace. But before the year ended, the sheriff’s office would need to hire more lawmen to replace those it lost. And one of the new deputies would cause even greater changes that would impact the county as well as Joe and Faith’s future.

It hadn’t been a bad winter, but the townsfolk of Idaho City were anxious for spring to arrive. Like everyone else, Joe would appreciate the warmer weather and longer days. But he and Sheriff Fulmer both dreaded the influx of gold hunters and the trouble they would bring. They needed more good men, but after losing two deputies, not a single acceptable candidate had applied.

Before the wagons left the Laramie Plains, a quiet epidemic began infecting some of the settlers. It was a disease without a cure and threatened to create havoc among the families. It started as just a passing remark, but soon word of a recent discovery surrounding Idaho City, just three hundred miles away inspired intense gold rush fever in many of the men. The first to become infected was Joe’s fellow scout, Chuck Lynch.

Joe and Faith were miles ahead of the long line of wagons as they ascended Cheyenne Pass. They knew that when they passed over the summit, the Laramie Plains would spread out before them. But just before they reached the top of the pass, Joe pulled up when he thought he heard gunfire. Just seconds later, he and Faith quickly rode to the summit where they witnessed what could only be called a massacre.

After finally crossing the South Platte River, the wagon train headed north toward Lodge Pole Cree where they expected to find another set of ruts leading west to Oregon. As he and Faith led their tent-cart away from Julesburg, Joe wondered if he wasn’t defying fate by leaving Colorado behind. The magnetic attraction that had pulled him south hadn’t diminished. But he still felt an obligation to the folks, even those who would never consider him a friend.

The days of unrelenting rain had kept the wagon train from moving for almost a week, and the folks were getting frustrated and angry. So, rather than try to cross the swollen Platte River, the wagon master had them rolling southwest hoping to cross when its level dropped. As Joe and Faith led their tent-cart ahead of the lead wagon, they didn’t allow the foul weather to affect their good mood. But it wasn’t Mother Nature who would soon cause them grief.

Fifteen-year-old Joe Beck wasn’t listening as the minister eulogized his uncle but was already planning on what he would have to do as soon as they returned to the Quimby farm. He wasn’t welcome there even before his uncle had died and knew that his cousin John would soon order him to leave. While he had had a basic idea of where he would go after he left the farm, he didn’t know what he would do with the rest of his life.