WHERE THE REAL FRONTIER BEGINS A young cowpuncher stakes a claim that can only be sealed with fists and a .44 Colt. . . . A gunfighter, tired of violence, finds himself pushed down a trail of bloody revenge. . . . From purple sage to gambler’s gold, from a señorita’s tempting smile to a splash of blood in the dust, here are stories with a distinctive L’Amour twist. A quiet farmer defends his honor in a moment of panic and luck . . . only to find true courage on the run from the dead man’s brothers. A young drifter defends a lady’s honor . . . and finds himself the quarry of a hanging posse. An aging marshal with a reputation as a crack shot faces a stranger who knows his secret. With relentless suspense and unforgettable drama, Louis L’Amour once again paints a vivid portrait of our western heritage that will live forever.

The instant New York Times bestseller! Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City’s streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent and turbulent town in the West. Enter Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Young and largely self-trained men, the lawmen led the effort that established frontier justice and the rule of law in the American West, and did it in the wickedest place in the United States. When they moved on, Wyatt to Tombstone and Bat to Colorado, a tamed Dodge was left in the hands of Jim Masterson. But before long Wyatt and Bat, each having had a lawman brother killed, returned to that threatened western Kansas town to team up to restore order again in what became known as the Dodge City War before riding off into the sunset. #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin's Dodge City tells the true story of their friendship, romances, gunfights, and adventures, along with the remarkable cast of characters they encountered along the way (including Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, and Theodore Roosevelt) that has gone largely untold—lost in the haze of Hollywood films and western fiction, until now.

The most famous cattle town of the trail-driving era, Dodge City, Kansas, holds a special allure for western historians and enthusiasts alike. Wm. B. Shillingberg now goes beyond the violence for which the town became notorious, more fully documenting its early history by uncovering the economic, political, and social forces that shaped Dodge. The author cuts through legend and myth to depict a Dodge City that few people really know. He takes readers back to the southwestern Kansas frontier and traces a town's evolution from a military site for protecting Santa Fe commerce, to a wild and lawless buffalo hunters' rendezvous, to a regional freighting center and the primary shipping point for Texas cattle on the central plains. Amid all this activity a community sprang up in 1872 and was still stumbling toward maturity fourteen years later when the great herds no longer came. Shillingberg describes this transformation of place and purpose, along with its attendant political machinations and business fervor, revealing singular personalities, social turmoil, and a local economy in flux. Along the way, the book offers new perspectives on the Battle of Adobe Walls, the constant maneuvering of railroad moguls and cattle barons, and the exploits of such legendary figures as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from city records to personal papers, Dodge City: The Early Years, 1872-1886 surpasses previous accounts of the town by depicting complex individuals and events in greater depth and detail. It shows us a community concerned with more than brothels, saloons, and gunplay. It will stand as the authoritative history of this quintessential western town.

These are the remarkable memoirs of Fred Dodge (1854-1938), Wells Fargo secret agent for fifty years, friend of Wyatt Earp, and fast man with a gun. Here are dozens of his cases--stage robberies, train holdups, long pursuits through the badlands, even suits against Wells Fargo for "delay to a corpse" and the bite of a vicious horse. In Under Cover for Wells Fargo his "unvarnished recollections" are preserved and carefully edited by Carolyn Lake, who discovered Dodge’s journals among Stuart N. Lake’s papers, awaiting a biography that was never written. Fred Dodge was a dead ringer for Morgan Earp, and this led to his early acquaintance with the famous brothers. In those days Dodge was posing as a gambler, and even Wyatt did not know that he was a Wells Fargo agent. Dodge sheds much light on the Earps in Tombstone and on how he teamed up with Heck Thomas to hunt down outlaws in Kansas and Oklahoma, including Bill Doolin’s gang and the Dalton brothers.

Raised on Gunsmoke, Bat Masterson, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, we know what it means to “get outta Dodge”—to make a hasty escape from a dangerous place, like the Dodge City of Wild West lore. But why, of all the notorious, violent cities of old, did Dodge win this distinction? And what does this tenacious cultural metaphor have to do with the real Dodge City? In a book as much about the making of cultural myths as it is about Dodge City itself, authors Robert Dykstra and Jo Ann Manfra take us back into the history of Dodge to trace the growth of the city and its legend side-by-side. An exploration of murder statistics, court cases, and contemporary accounts reveals the historical Dodge to be neither as violent nor as lawless as legend has it—but every bit as intriguing. In a style that captures the charm and chicanery of storytelling in the Old West, Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West finds a culprit in a local attorney, Harry Gryden, who fed sensational accounts to the national media during the so-called "Dodge City War" of 1883. Once launched, the legend leads the authors through the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America, as Dodge City became a useful metaphor in more and more television series and movies. Meanwhile, back in the actual Dodge, struggling on a lost frontier, a mirror image of the mythical city began to emerge, as residents increasingly embraced tourism as an economic necessity. Dodge City and the Birth of the Wild West maps a metaphor for belligerent individualism and social freedom through the cultural imagination, from a historical starting point to its mythical reflection. In this, the book restores both the reality of Dodge and its legend to their rightful place in the continuum of American culture.

When Daniel's mother dies, he is brought under the protection of the AMO: the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws. It is an introduction to a world of revenge, revolution and mind-bending chemicals, where anarchists, alchemists and high-stake gamblers co-exist. It is a place in which magic and murder are the norm. So begins an extraordinary quest for knowledge and understanding in this unforgettable outlaw classic.

Presents folklore and legends, heroes and villains, wars and important events in the history of the Old West. Includes also examples of Western art and music.