Bill Brooks - Free Library Land Online - Language

Pretty Boy

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:20:23 +0300

"As I lay dying, I see Daddy Walter sitting on the porch reading a Bible sold to him by a man wearing spats." Thus begins the novel of Charles Arthur Floyd, best known to depression-era America as Pretty Boy Floyd. "I was the dreamer, the seeker of all things beyond my reach, the dandy, the dancer, the lover of countless woman, the bank robber, the husband, the father, the son, the brother. I was the most wanted man in America."Rising out of the harvests and oil fields of the Oklahoma dustbowl that John Steinbeck so poignantly captured in The Grapes of Wrath, Pretty Boy Floyd became the most wanted man in America by the newly formed FBI-and the woman who loved him.And while Bonnie and Clyde were tearing up the country, robbing and shooting their way across the Southwest-Charley knew them both, cared for neither-Charley was robbing banks from Kansas City to Ohio. The local newspapers were full of stories about guys like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and Al...

Go and Bury Your Dead

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:20:27 +0300

John Henry Cole's life has quieted down from what it had always been, and he can now settle down and make improvements on his small ranch. But everything changes when an old rancher named Wilson rides in with his two sons.

Wilson is willing to pay Cole $5,000 to help get back his wife, Lenora, who has been taken hostage by Lucky Jack Dancer, an outlaw who had robbed the train on which she was a passenger. She is being held prisoner in Gun Town, a safe haven for outlaws.

Cole had sided Lucky Jack Dancer years ago when both of them had operated as US marshals in the Indian Nations, but that was before Lucky Jack had quit the service and become an outlaw. The situation becomes complicated when Cole learns that Wilson's son doesn't want the woman back and that Wilson's health is seriously compromised.

Men of Violence

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:20:24 +0300

John Henry Cole worked for years in Cheyenne, Wyoming—first as a policeman, and later a detective. He enjoyed the work, despite its dangers, but it was time for a change. So he decided to open his own agency, one staffed by former lawmen like himself. In practice they might be bounty hunters, but he hired men he had worked with before that he knew and trusted to be honorable and professional—and then they got to work. And work it was. Cole's agency was located in just about the most dangerous place it could be: Red Pony, in the Cherokee strip, a region often referred to as a no-man's-land because of its rampant outlawry. But the way Cole saw it, what better place to hunt for outlaws with bounties on their heads? But Cole's team may have bit off more than it can chew when it sets out to capture the notorious Sam Starr and his outlaw gang, and bring them all to justice.

Vengeance Trail

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:56:32 +0200

Buscadero

Wed, 11 Nov 1992 13:48:29 +0200

Johnny Montana was tall and dark, and sport a thin, neatly trimmed mustache and he had midnight black eyes. He was particular about his person; he shaved regular and put rosewater in his hair and preferred clean shirts when he could get them...Johnny Montana was the kind of man who made things happen.
"You planning on sticking around these parts for the rest of your days?" That question completely changed Katie Swensen's life....She knew in an instant that her answer would be 'no' if Johnny Montana was asking her to go away with him. They left in the late hours of a warm evening, her daddy snoring in the other room. Johnny Montana was the handsomest man she'd ever met. It wasn't until a few days later that she learned he was also a gambler, a road agent and a killer.
Henry Dollar was a man that knew horses and knew how to ride them, and he knew guns and how to use them. He'd been tested by gunfire in the sixteen years he'd spent with the D Company of the Texas Rangers....

Blood Storm

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 13:48:29 +0200

Business lately has been deadly for Ike Kelly. Recent unexpected gunplay has whittled his detective agency down to a single operative: a man named John Henry Cole. Cole is the only man left when a new assignment comes in from a former lover of Kelly's, a woman operating an escort service in the new mining camp of Deadwood in Dakota Territory. Three of the young women working for her have been murdered, and someone is trying to cover up their deaths.
It's a dangerous job, and Cole is advised that he must take every precaution—as if he needed such advice. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok was recently murdered at Deadwood, and Calamity Jane Canary and Doc Holliday are among Cole's potential suspects. Add that to a corrupt constable and a bounty hunter who just happens to be an old enemy of Cole's, and it's clear there are many who will not welcome his arrival in Deadwood. Cole is a lonely man in a lonely profession, and finding a murderer in the wild mining camp could be...

Protecting Hickok

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:52:23 +0200

Killing the Legend

City life is all Teddy Blue has ever known -- until the cravenmurder of his brother, a Chicago policeman, changes his world overnight. Determined to hunt down the killer, he joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency and buries all thoughts of his old life along with his slaughtered sibling. But the former law student needs experience -- and Teddy's about to get more than he bargained for in the wide open West, acting as bodyguard to the famous William Hickok. Irascible and unpredictable, "Wild Bill" more than lives up to his name. And now that his eyesight is failing and his taste for opium is increasing, his enemies are preparing to put a permanent end to his fabled career. Suddenly Hickok's survival depends on an untested young man from Illinois -- who's about to learn quick that, in Wyoming, justice isn't won with law and reason . . . but with a loaded Colt and a lightning draw.

The Messenger

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:00:44 +0200

Reeling from the death of his son, a down-on-his-luck rancher witnesses a random murder that pits him head-to-head with a blood-thirsty outlaw!
Royce Blood had everything he wanted. He owned a small ranch on good land, and he and his wife, Ophelia, had a ten-year-old son, Nicholas. But Royce's life was shattered one day when Nicholas decided to take a typical afternoon swim in the river near the family's ranch. His father had no choice but to watch as his young son was attacked and killed by a bear.
Racked with the guilt of his son's death, Royce sets out to kill the animal, despite desperate pleas from Ophelia. When he finally returns, he finds Ophelia gone. Brokenhearted, Royce abandons everything, turning to drifting and drinking, until an old friend convinces him to take work as a messenger guard on his stage line. His circumstances becoming increasingly dire, Royce comes upon the outlaw Gypsy Davy, notorious for never leaving any witnesses to his...

Ride the Man Down

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:20:25 +0300

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy US marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations when he was shot and seriously injured. Now, fifteen years later, employed as a deputy for Judge Roy Bean in Texas, Cole receives a personal summons from Judge Parker to appear in his court within thirty days. Cole isn't inclined to go, but he knows whatever's on Judge Parker's mind is serious and decides he has to go.

Saving Masterson

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:17:03 +0200

A Bad Place to Die

When Wyatt Earp and his brothers left Dodge City, they left the job of keeping the peace to young Bat Masterson. But a lawman's badge is little more than a target in this rough, wide-open frontier town where, for every citizen who abides by the law, there are two who want to tear it apart. And nearly every stranger who rides in is offered a handsome fee to put a bullet between a lawman's eyes. Teddy Blue's come for a different reason. The Pinkerton agent has built a reputation as a useful man with a gun, having already saved the famous skins of Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. But keeping Masterson breathing could prove to be the most difficult assignment of all. Because there's nowhere to turn for help in Dodge; it's just Bat and Blue against pretty much the whole damn town. . . with the killers lining up to take their shots.

The Big Gundown

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:43:08 +0200

A talented healer forced to become a fugitive for a killing he wasn't responsible for, Jake Horn found sanctuary in the rough Dakota town of Sweet Sorrow -- and in the tin badge that marks him as the local law. Now his discovery of a dead ranch hand is bringing his demons home.As a doctor and a sheriff, Jake's witnessed death in all its dark guises -- and he recognizes a murder when he sees one. But asking too many questions of the wrong people is asking for trouble, and suddenly expert killers are gathering with their sights on a lawman who's got a need to see justice done. The big gundown is coming, as relentlessly as the winter snow whipping across the prairie. And there's nowhere for a good man to hide when five shooters blinded by hate won't leave Sweet Sorrow until he's dead.

Winter Kill

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:12:00 +0200

The winter around Cheyenne, Wyoming, is devastating, killing both people and livestock. John Henry Cole lives three miles out of town on his small ranch, where he waits out the storm that is quickly killing his cattle and horses. Everything he owns is dying before his eyes, and there isn't anything he can do about it. His dreams of a settled life are as dead as everything else. He knows it's time to move on, and move on he does—but not in the direction he expected.Teddy Green, a Texas ranger, arrives in Cheyenne and seeks Cole's help in locating Ella Mims, a woman who once lived in Cheyenne and with whom Cole had once been intimate. Green wants to question Mims concerning her involvement in a Denver City murder ... but he's not the only one searching for her.

Defending Cody

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:48:29 +0200

A Bullet for Buffalo Bill

No one knows better than the great showman William Cody what a burden fame can be, especially when he has to move quickly to narrowly dodge an assassin's bullet. Organizing a hunting party for himself and some would-be investors, Buffalo Bill knows he needs some professional protection, and the name Teddy Blue comes immediately to mind. The young Pinkerton agent with razor-edge instincts and dead-on aim once got Cody's pal Bill Hickok out of a lethal jam. But Teddy's got a personal obligation to see to first, namely the rescue of an old friend from the hangman's noose in New Mexico. And once he joins Cody and his entourage in the wild, Teddy's immediately caught in a deadly tangle that may be too much for one hired guardian -- trapped by the cruelty of unpredictable nature...and in the gunsights of hunters determined to get one last trophy.

Killing Mr. Sunday

Tue, 11 Nov 1997 17:25:50 +0200

Jake Horn was on the dodge for a crime he didn't commit when the town of Sweet Sorrow took him in and rewarded him with a badge he didn't want. Still, this out-of-the-way Dakota hellhole is a good place for a man to get lost in.