They thought they had it all worked out. They were wrong.The minute they set the kidnap in motion, nothing went according to plan. The men who were hired to steal the beautiful Norrie Findlay away from her husband's vast ranch decided to go into business for themselves, figuring to take the ransom money and the woman herself, whom they both lusted after.But Norrie herself had other ideas. And when, in desperation, she managed to escape their clutches, she ended up running into Buck Halliday.Halliday agreed to help her cross the desert to get back to her husband, but there was something about the woman he just couldn't entirely trust. And when they finally made it to the town of Calder, all hell broke loose.The kidnappers were determined to recapture their prey, and were willing to kill anyone who stood in their way. They did, too. But as the bodies started piling up, they realized one important fact.Buck Halliday was a hard man to kill!

Old Ben Hillary had a rustling problem — a bad one. Somehow the cattle-lifters were able to strike time and again, always where they were least expected, and then vanish into the wilderness with their stolen beeves.When his hired hand, Buck Halliday, came up with a plan to beat them, Ben was all for it. But no one could foresee the bitter price he would have to pay ...To make matters worse, Ben's brazen young daughter, Dora, had set her sights on Halliday, and that put Halliday at odds with the old man's bullying foreman, Adam Wyatt.When the showdown came, Halliday wasn't sure he could trust Wyatt to stand by him.In fact, he was pretty sure the man would take the first chance he could put a bullet in his back!

It was drought country. The land was little more than dust, the cattle slowly but surely dying on the hoof. For most of the ranchers in those parts, it had been a year-long disaster. But for local businessman Harp McPhee, it was a situation he aimed to exploit for all it was worth. Knowing the drought couldn't last forever, McPhee aimed to buy the land and the stock at rock-bottom prices, and he brought in a bunch of hired gunnies to back him against any opposition. The situation seemed hopeless. And yet banker Finch Rogan had an idea that his old friend, Buck Halliday, might successfully challenge McPhee and his army of gunslingers.Halliday didn't want trouble. But the settling of trouble was how he made his living. So he tied down his .44 and came to deliver redemption to the town of the same name.

It wasn't Halliday's fight. But when he found an innocent man hanging from a tree for a crime he didn't commit, he felt obligated to bring his own brand of justice to the guilty.Chief among them was Cord Dorgan, who was scaring off nesters and grabbing up their land every which-way he could. All he cared about was creating and ruling the biggest ranch in the territory. And the folks in and around Crater Creek – including the county sheriff – was just letting him get away with it.Halliday wasn't built that way. When he saw a pretty young woman in danger, when he saw a kid shot to ribbons for trying to stand up and be a man, he had to buy into it.After that, it was war. All-out war.

Randy Davis had it all worked out. And after the ambush, he and his gang were going to be richer than they'd ever dreamed possible. Davis had everything planned down to the last detail. It was going to be like taking candy from a baby. Or so he thought.The one thing he didn't count on was the unexpected appearance of a drifter who chanced upon them whilst looking for water in an otherwise parched land.But was the newcomer really what he said he was? He had the look of a man who knew his way around guns, a man who'd take no nonsense from anyone. He looked to Davis like a lawman.So he had to die.But the man himself had other ideas about that. And his name was Buck Halliday.

Jude Cowley was an ambitious man. He wanted to take over all the land around the town of Maple and create an empire. One by one he had bought out or scared off all the smaller ranchers. Now the valley was pretty much his.Then Halliday rode into town.Cowley recognized something in the gun-fast drifter that he didn't like. If he wasn't careful, Buck Halliday could well become a threat.And Cowley didn't like threats.So he sent out the order – kill Halliday!But Halliday proved to be a real hard man to stop

The old man and his lovely niece Hope were in big trouble. The local land baron, bully-boy Aldo Latimer, wanted their ranch – at any cost.But what made the old Clayton place worth so much to him? Why was he willing to try every dirty trick in the book to get it?All Dick and Hope Clayton knew was that they needed protection ... and when Buck Halliday rode in, they figured they'd found it.Halliday wasn't looking for gun-work right then, but he liked the old man, and there was something about Hope that got under his skin and made him think it was time to settle down. So he signed on.But the stakes were so high that soon, Halliday wasn't sure who he could really trust – not old Dick, not Hope ... and certainly not his arch rival, Aldo Latimer's hired gun, Rees Mann.

It started with a woman Buck Halliday liked a lot. Jig Hamlyn, however, had other ideas. He figured Lucy Sproule belonged to his brother, Bill ... and when he tried to make something of it, it came to shooting.Halliday was told to quit the territory, if he wanted to go on breathing. Once Bill found out what had happened, he and his partner-in-crime, Duke Seegar, would be sure to come after him. So, wanting to avoid further trouble, Halliday saddled up and rode ... straight into a trumped-up charge of stagecoach robbery and murder.Jailed and facing a hang rope, he had to bust out and find the real culprits. But with every hand turned against him, that was going to be one tall order.

Old Clarence Beebe was pushing one last herd up the trail to Pebble Ridge when three of his men got thrown into jail following a saloon brawl. All he had now was his beautiful daughter, Emma, two wet-behind-the-ears youngsters and his bully-boy ramrod, Clay Horden.When Buck Halliday came along, Beebe decided to hire him on. But for reasons of his own, Horden was dead-set against it, and did everything he could to make Halliday quit.What he didn't know was that Halliday had no quit in him. When he took a man's money, he sided him all the way. And when the powder-keg finally exploded, he was right there with gun in hand, taking the fight to the men who threatened to take Beebe's herd away from him!

The three hardcases were after Kirk Nesbitt. And now they had him, they were going to kill him, real slow.There was just one problem.The man they'd caught wasn't Kirk Nesbitt at all. He was Buck Halliday. And Halliday knew just what to do when the deck was stacked against him.Leaving at least one dead man behind him, he ran straight into the arms of a beautiful young girl who also believed him to be Nesbitt ... and now Halliday started to get curious about the man he kept being mistaken for. Who was Nesbitt? Why did so many people want him dead?As everything started to become clear, and the attempts on his life kept coming, Halliday checked his weapons and went to war ... and the body count started to rise.

Halliday rode out of a dust storm and straight into trouble. It began with a boy tied to a corral post, a man hanging from a tree, a back-shooter who figured to claim Halliday's scalp and a lawman with a real bad attitude.From there things only got worse ...Jay Denton figured to take over the entire territory and didn't care who had to die in the process. Men, women, kids ... everyone was fair game – until, for the sake of a young widow, Halliday decided to buy into it and stop him dead in his tracks.That was as good as a declaration of war. But there was just one problem. The widow never reckoned on all the blood and death that would come when hell finally broke loose.

Buck Halliday fled the town of Pardoo after being falsely accused of murder. In his haste to avoid a lynching, he strayed from the main trail and ended up in a desolate valley with a bad reputation. They said plenty of men had ridden into the nameless valley, but none had ever returned.It wasn't long before Halliday discovered why.Almost before he knew it, he was fighting for his life against a vicious clan led by a madman named Masterson, and his only hope of salvation lay with the very posse that was trailing him, and determined to make sure he kept his date with the noose!

After months on the trail, Buck Halliday and his friend Dave Lester, had finally delivered a rancher's cattle herd to market. Now they had cash in their pockets and a hankering to spend it on women and booze. But then they were attacked by a bunch of riders, and in the fight Dave stopped a bullet. Halliday managed to get him to the town of Heathaze, but if he thought that was the end of their problems, he had to think again.Heathaze was ruled by a beautiful woman named Charity Rowland, but Charity had brothers — both of them outlaws of the worst stripe.Halliday didn't want to tangle with them, but when he was robbed and beaten, that made it personal. And when the Rowland boys hit the local bank, Halliday went right after them.But not alone.An old-timer decided to stand right alongside him. And so did Charity herself ... against her kinfolks!

Buck Halliday was a sudden man with a gun. That's why Judge Cowper, of Shimmer Creek, hired him. The judge wanted a man named Jason Henley killed. Henley, he said, had taken over the town, lock, stock and barrel, and now he expected every other businessman to pay him protection money.Halliday had killed men before, but he wasn't a killer for hire. Still ... maybe he could convince Henley that it might be better for his health if he made dust and headed for someplace else.Trouble was, Henley had more lives than a cat. And to get to him, a feller first had to go through his pet gunman, the notorious Rafe Murchison.It appeared to Halliday that he was really going to earn his money on this job.

Halliday was minding his own business when he rode straight into a shooting-match between a pair of youngsters and a bunch of seasoned gunmen. The contest was so uneven that he just couldn't pass on by, so he took a hand ... and soon found himself caught up in the middle of a bitter range war.Donna Heller and her hair-trigger kid brother Kip were struggling to hold their ranch against cattleman Nathan Dean. Dean wanted their land and had hired a whole passel of gunfighters to make sure he got it.It was an old story, and Halliday had heard all too often in the past, but this time something just didn't sit right with him, and he wondered if everything was really as it seemed.Even as he and Donna grew closer to each other, the girl threw him a further surprise. She was an outlaw's woman ... and the outlaw in question, Sam Rushton, had jealous streak a mile wide.Halliday could have lit out and avoided any further confrontation. But he had the...