Collected here for the first time, these vintage frontier stories introduce you to lawmen and loners, ranchers and renegades, gunslingers, cardsharps, bank robbers - even a 'he school-ma'rm'. In these pages L'Amour brings to life such classic characters as the Cactus Kid, Tensleep Mooney, One-eared Tim and the gunfighter Kim Sartain.

Summoned to a dark desert plateau by the desperate letter of an old friend, renowned investigator, Mike Raglan is slowly drawn into a world of mystery and violence, where he will ultimately learn the astonishing legacy of the Anasazi

William Tell Sackett had followed a different path from his younger brothers, but his name, like theirs, was spoken with respect and just a little fear. Where Orrin had brought law and order from New Mexico to the plains of Montana, backed up by the gunfighting talents of his brother Tye, Tell Sackett's destiny drew him to Texas after he had to kill a man. There, in the high, lonesome country, he came upon a vein of pure gold. All he'd wanted was enough to buy a ranch, but he son learned that gold has its own ways with men.

He could outride and outshoot any five men, but he was a fool for a lady in distress. The posse was hot on his trail for murder when he took time out to rescue Sylvie from a gana of desperadoes. It wasn't till she'd bushwhacked him with a shotgun and tried to poison him that he realized she was up to no good. And no sooner had he shot his way out of her clutches than he met Penelope. After he'd heard her sad story, he should have cut and run, but somehow a Sackett never seems to learn the easy way.

The men were as tough as their names: Duke Pritchard, the boss, McComb. Diablo, the Mexican. And Superstition Kid, considered the fastest gun in ten counties. They left O'Brien's friends bullet-stuffed and dead. The buffalo hunter didn't know why. All he knew was that he was going to track down the Pritchard Bunch and pay them back, if he had to trail them clear to Texas.

Ben Curry knew it was a dog-eat-dog country and if you survived you had to have big teeth. From a secret fortress in the wild, broken canyon country his men rode hard and smart as far as Canada and Mexico, from San Antone to Los Angeles to pull jobs that made the James gang look like pikers. Curry's son, Mike, was raised to roam free. While he learned all the deadly skills of the lawless breed, he had yet to break the law. Now it is time for Curry to retire and he has called in his untested son to take over his reins of control. Caught between jealous gang members, his growing love for an innocent girl, and the relentless pursuit of two lawmen, Mike Bastian, son of a wanted man, must decide whether to follow the road to hell down his father's outlaw trail.