After a failed expedition to find a railway route to the West along the 38th parallel, Frémont finds himself trapped in the snowbound Colorado mountains. His choices are simple: die, or fight his way out.

"Collected here for the first time are all the Western short stories of Richard S. Wheeler, winner of four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for his lifetime achievement in the world of Western literature by the Western Writers of America, with a cast of vividly drawn characters including madams, miners, morticians, detectives, newsmen, and lawmen."--

Down the Eastern slopes of the Rockies, out upon the Great Plains, and into the heart of Blackfoot country flows the Two Medicine River. To this wild and beautiful land come a pair of young wanderers, half-breeds born of two worlds, but belonging to neither. Marie Therese de Paris, driven by the ancestral fires in her spirit, sets out on a vision quest, hoping to save the Blackfoot Indians from their cruel fate. Peter Kipp, bold and ambitious, chooses...

"The story of a vaudeville troupe that makes its way to Western mining towns"--

"A widow must defend herself and her property from the greedy townsfolk of Marysville, Montana"--

When three people need to leave Virginia City, they face a jarring stagecoach ride across the plains toward Salt Lake through an area infested with ruthless road agents.

When Nathaniel Hapgood headed West in 1873 to stake a homestead claim in the Arizona Territory, he wagered it would take backbreaking labor to carve out a living -- nothing his Yankee know-how couldn't handle. But nothing in his New England upbringing prepared Nathaniel for Don Ignacio Olivera, who flew the Mexican flag over his hacienda and had his own private army to protect the vast lands his family had held for over one hundred years.