Louis L'Amour

Early in Louis L'Amour's career, he wrote a number of novel-length stories for "pulp" Western magazines. "I lived with my characters so closely that their lives were still as much a part of me as I was of them long after the issues in which they appeared went out of print," he said. "I wanted to tell the reader more about my people and why they did what they did." So he revised and expanded these magazine works to be published again as full-length

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it." This volume presents five more of L'Amour's fine short stories about the West, restored according to how they first appeared in their initial publication in magazines.

"Riding for the Brand"
Jed Asbury was stripped naked by Indians and forced to run the gauntlet. He ran it better than they had

Two men in the isolated town of Tucker want the XY ranch—Jim Walker and the ruthless Wing Cary—and one of them wants it badly enough to kill for it.

The Black Rock Coffin Makers is a tale of suspense and danger, with chases, shootouts, double-crosses and posses, all for possession of the XY ranch.

Here are two exciting adventures from the pen of Louis L'Amour.

"Trap of Gold"

Wetherton has been three months out of Horsehead before he finds his first color. The gold is located at the head of a fan laying in a gigantic crack in a granite upthrust that resembles a fantastic ruin. This crumbling granite is slashed with a vein of quartz that is literally laced with gold! The problem is that the granite upthrust is