Peter returns from college to his father's ranch after an accident has left him physically crippled but not without ability or enterprise.

In "Speedy's Desert Dance" a young drifter runs into trouble after overhearing two outlaws plan a murder and kidnapping. A gripping story set during the War Between the States. "A Watch in the Wilderness" finds Marse Roberts' company in a trench as a sharpshooter in a tree above starts to shoot them, one by one. "The Good Badman" is Ed Garver, known in the ring as Kid Denver. It was hard luck that finished his fighting career, and that hard luck seems...

Francisco Valdez arrives in Spanish California to marry Ortiza Tarabal, but she falls in love with his slave, El Rojo.

Winsor Glanvil and Louise Carney plan to be married in a sequestered valley by a local clergyman, but Jack Rutledge, a jealous rival, decides to prevent Glanvil from marrying any woman by disfiguring him permanently, destroying one side of his face with the cutting edge of a spur.

"A young man with a bad reputation and many aliases helps a rancher in his battle with a clan of rustlers"--

In Master and Man, Bobbie is a black man who can outride, outfight, and outshoot any white man in the mountain desert. His unwavering moral code serves as a model for his often cruel and dissolute white master. A Lucky Dog is a tale of desperate flight by a jewel thief named Hagger from the man he robbed. In Colorado, facing a battle with winter cold and snow, he comes upon an isolated cabin and its sole occupant, a weakened bull terrier left there...

"Two connected stories discovered among unpublished works by Frederick Faust are combined to create this western story about a young man whose fascination with tall tales told about a fictional hero causes him to make a decision that sends him down a path outside the law"--

"Three western stories where unlikely heroes struggle with their consciences and desires to discover where true values lie"--