Mountains, sage of the Utah desert and the pursuit of a wild stallion.

They are the stuff of legend, thundering out of the harsh landscapes and stunning vistas of the American West, vividly lodged in our collective imaginations. From Buffalo Bill to Billy the Kid, from Cochise to Jesse James, these names and so many others screamed across newspaper and dime store magazine headlines while the Wild West was won. Lost Trails features inventive, hard-riding, action-packed stories by America's best Western writers. Louis L'Amour, Elmer Kelton, William W. Johnstone, Loren Estleman, Johnny Boggs, Don Coldsmith, and many more, share tales of the legends born out of the wild frontier. So sit a spell and listen to a good ol' yarn about Mark Twain's meeting with Buffalo Bill, a man who shoed horses for Jesse James, or a little known nugget about Cochise by the legendary Louis L'Amour. . .and for a time, you can find yourself riding those Lost Trails with the real people that make the legends of the West come alive today.

When Tip Creston comes to the town of Greenwood, he learns of the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old Romanian girl ten years earlier. Before long, a neighboring wheat farmer is found dead. Suspicion falls on a rancher who has been carrying on with the farmer’s wife, but there is no compelling motive. Then Tip learns that the wheat farmer was in collusion with the owner of the grain elevator to embezzle wheat. The disconsolate boyfriend of the missing girl is obsessed with the case and begins to meddle. Not much later, the housekeeper for the grain merchant’s mother is found dead on the open range. In town, Tip follows the crowd to the grain elevator, where the disconsolate boyfriend has gone after the grain dealer in the offices on the second story. He pursues the grain dealer out onto the roof and has a confrontation. Many of the townspeople are reluctant to take the initiative to know more, but Tip feels a need to continue to push for the truth about what happened to Rosina Petrescu, the rose of Greenwood.

With a lot of rustling going on in the area, tensions are high and rumors are flying. Word is going around that some of the larger ranchers have hired a gunman named Wolf Carlton to stop the rustling and protect their cattle. And now a couple of the small ranchers have been found shot to death. Unfortunately for Spencer Prescott, some of the rumors are about him. Some people think that Spencer, not Wolf, is the one killing the competition. Even worse, some folks think Spencer is behind the rustling—and that means trigger-happy Wolf will be looking to put a bullet in his back.