A beautiful woman, a powerful Mexican rancher, and an exotic new breed of cattle come to John Slaughter's San Bernardino Valley ranch, along with the prospect of making a small fortune. While Slaughter's men are out keeping the peace in Tombstone, an act of betrayal turns up the heat under his own roof, and a killer is stalking Slaughter's wealthy Mexican guest. Indians suddenly savagely attack Slaughter's ranch, but it is only the first shot in a bigger, blazing Arizona bloodbath. The real enemy is coming next: armed to the teeth, driven by vengeance, and deep into a killing spree that only John Slaughter alone can stop.

Enticed by the richest poker tournament the west has ever seen, a horde of cheating and ruthless card players is gathering at Tombstone, Arizona. Lawman John Slaughter already has his hands full when a local Romeo takes off with a rancher's daughter and draws the ire of her father and a blood thirsty posse. Back in town, a murder shatters the poker tournament, with a beautiful Englishwomen as the prime suspect. John Horton Slaughter has been to hell and back as a soldier, rancher and Texas Ranger, and this just might be his toughest day yet. To set things straight he'll need every bullet he can muster, aim straight, and shoot to kill. An kill again.

The legendary sheriff who tamed Tombstone, Arizona, comes to vivid life in this historical Western series debut by the acclaimed authors of Savage Texas. John Horton Slaughter’s life story reads like a history of the American West itself. He’s been a Civil War soldier, a trail driver, a cattleman, and a Texas Ranger. Now Slaughter begins a new chapter—as sheriff of the wildest town in the West. It’s been barely a decade since the notorious gunfight at the O. K. Corral. Rustlers and outlaws still terrorize the land, and the good citizens of Tombstone are at the end of their ropes. Good thing Texas John Slaughter is the toughest lawman west of the Rio Grande. With a backbone of steel to match the iron law of his badge, Texas John is determined to bring peace to this parched desert hell even if it kills him. Which it just might. When word gets out about an untapped vein of silver in the Dragoon Mountains, every man in town heads for the hills. The streets of Tombstone are an easy target for raiders, looters—and one gang of outlaws foolish enough to kidnap Slaughter’s own wife.

Fictionized biography of the legendary western rancher and onetime sheriff of Tombstone.

In 1854, the United States acquired the roughly 30,000-square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico from Mexico as part of the Gadsden Purchase. This new Southern Corridor was ideal for train routes from Texas to California, and soon tracks were laid for the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe rail lines. Shipping goods by train was more efficient, and for desperate outlaws and opportunistic lawmen, robbing trains was high-risk, high-reward. The Southern Corridor was the location of sixteen train robberies between 1883 and 1922. It was also the homebase of cowboy-turned-outlaw Black Jack Ketchum’s High Five Gang. Most of these desperadoes rode the rails to Arizona’s Cochise County on the US-Mexico border where locals and lawmen alike hid them from discovery. Both Wyatt Earp and Texas John Slaughter tried to clean them out, but it took the Arizona Rangers to finish the job. It was a time and place where posses were as likely to get arrested as the bandits. Some of the Rangers and some of Slaughter’s deputies were train robbers. When rewards were offered there were often so many claimants that only the lawyers came out ahead. Southwest Train Robberies chronicles the train heists throughout the region at the turn of the twentieth century, and the robbers who pulled off these train jobs with daring, deceit, and plain dumb luck! Many of these blundering outlaws escaped capture by baffling law enforcement. One outlaw crew had their own caboose, Number 44, and the railroad shipped them back and forth between Tucson and El Paso while they scouted locations. Legend says one gang disappeared into Colossal Cave to split the loot leaving the posse out front while they divided the cash and escaped out another entrance. The antics of these outlaws inspired Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to blow up an express car and to run out guns blazing into the fire of a company of soldiers.

Walter Noble Burns (1872–1932) served with the First Kentucky Infantry during the Spanish-American War and covered General John J. Pershing’s pursuit of Pancho Villa in Mexico as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. However history-making these forays may seem, they were only the beginning. In the last six years of his life, Burns wrote three books that propelled New Mexico outlaw Billy the Kid, Tombstone marshal Wyatt Earp, and California bandit Joaquín Murrieta into the realm of legend.