Savage ran like fury. An officer was bellowing pointless orders and men were fanning out across the top of the bluff to search for the intruder.Savage had doubled back to the primed but unattended field guns. Sweating and straining, he dragged them out of line so that they were facing each other. Then he crouched behind the end gun, clutching the gunner's punk and furiously working the vesta until it produced a spark. Not good enough. He tried again and the punk began to smolder.Savage gave an evil grin and a yell of triumph that was swallowed in the flash and roar of four field guns firing on each other and exploding into deadly shrapnel that whizzed across the bluff like grapeshot.He was over the rim already, but the blast wave carried him further. Behind him the bluff was erupting like a volcano of dirt and rock and shredded bodies.

After all the trails they'd followed, and all the times they'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder against one bad man or another, the time had finally come for Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos to ride their separate ways. And though they had never really gotten along too well, each man felt a sense of loss at the prospect.But Benedict had met and fallen in love with the beautiful Charity Flint. The couple were about to go back East and get married.Then Colonel Oliver Traven, an old friend of Benedict's, asked for his help. Traven's son Mark had gone missing three years earlier in the parched lands of the Llano Estacado – the Staked Plains. Traven wanted to make one last search for his son – or his son's body – before he gave up hope completely of ever seeing him again.Benedict couldn't refuse the man ... and before long he and Brazos were up to their shell belts in trouble. But the outcome of their search was to hold a terrible sting in the tail ... for...

Duke Benedict had killed Jory Archer in a gunfight six months earlier. Now Jory's brother, Teal, was itching to even the score. But to hedge his bets he took along a bunch of the toughest cutthroats ever to rob a stage or blow a bank safe.So Duke Benedict decided to get them before they could get him.What he didn't bank on was the Outlaw Queen Clementine Jones.Clementine had developed a soft spot for Teal. When he ran out on her, and took some of her best men with him, that affection turned to hate, and a burning desire for revenge.Suddenly the odds against Benedict went sky-high ... but luckily he had big Hank Brazos to back him, and together they were a veritable two-man army.War was declared in the desert ghost town called Hardluck. Before it was over, Boot Hill was going to get awful crowded ... and Clementine Jones was going to be dreadful sorry they'd ever tangled!

Spargo was a mining town ... but there hadn't been any mining there for a while. The mines were in a dangerous condition, and their owner, Foley Kingston, refused to make improvements. So the miners—those who'd survived the numerous cave-ins and accidents—went on strike, and Kingston called on his old friend, Duke Benedict, to help him break it. Benedict's partner, big Hank Brazos, immediately sided with the miners. And even though Benedict knew Kingston was at fault, he had to stand by him. Back in the War, Kingston had saved his life, so he owed the man. But there were darker forces at work in Spargo—from Kingston's cheating wife Rhea to saloon owner Ace Beauford, who wanted to run the entire outfit all by himself. And then there was a man-mountain named Paddy Clancy, who figured to double-cross all of them!

Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos were finally closing in on the man they'd sworn to kill; the same man whose gang of cutthroats had massacred innocent men by the hundreds throughout the late Civil War. And Bo Rangle knew it. So he figured to dig up the fortune in Confederate gold he'd stolen at the Battle of Pea Ridge and then high-tail it to Mexico. If anyone got in his way ... well, that was going to be their hard fortune.But still Benedict and Brazos kept coming. They survived ambushes, shootouts, a terrifying white-water ride through the Lizard River and still kept after their quarry.And yet there was something in them that almost hoped they wouldn't catch up to him.Because when they did, when Rangle lay stone-cold dead at their feet, there was another battle each man would have to face.They were going to have to gunfight each other!

You don't cross Clint Savage if you want to go on living.Savage's Colts roared, and he got three or four shots away before the return fire lashed back at him, sending him into a headlong dive that skinned his elbows and made him drop one gun.Sprawled on his belly, he listened to the rattle of gunfire and the whine of the ricochets as lead zipped overhead.The gunfire faded, and as quickly as it had come, the formidable procession swept away between the buttes.With his chin resting on his fist, Savage watched the dust climb and slowly fade in the heated air.He began thinking of death.Not his.Theirs.

The two strangers rode into town on the trail of a gun-fast killer named Stark. When they left, however, they'd stolen $15,000 in gold dust from the Ophir Mine.The local marshal had one other piece of information to help him track them down. They'd given their names as Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos.And that's how Benedict and Brazos came to be wanted—dead or alive.Determined to prove their innocence and bring the real outlaws to book, they rode into a town that had more than its fair share of intrigue. Nothing in Larrabee was as it seemed. And before the mystery was finally cracked, there would be heartbreak for some, and cold lead for others ...

Tom Fallon of the Southwest Militia needed a man he could trust to get into an outlaw stronghold called Drum and rescue the beautiful wife of the state governor, so he called for an old friend, Duke Benedict. But Benedict showed up with a friend of his own, big Hank Brazos ... so Fallon found himself with two good men.That alone wasn't enough to guarantee success, though. First they had to get into Drum, and for this they needed the help of a sinister gunman called Holly, who wore a silver mask to hide the ruin of a face that had been chewed-up by a bullet many years before ... and they weren't at all sure they could trust Holly.Then there was the matter of a wild gun known as Caleb Flint, Killer.With the life of the woman at stake, they had no choice but to go ahead and see what they could do. So they loaded up their guns and set out in full expectation of the war to come.And war was exactly what they got.

If ever a man was born to hang, it was Dusty Lane. But Lane never figured he would hang for a crime he didn't commit ... in this case, a cold-blooded double murder.Luckily for Dusty, his old friend Hank Brazos got to hear about his plight and decided to do something about it—with the reluctant help of his gun-swift partner Duke Benedict.They rode for the town of Spearhead with no set plan in mind, but quickly started to put all the pieces together ... a witness who wasn't as reliable as he seemed ... a sheriff who would sooner look the other way ... an undertaker with big ambitions ... and a whisper-voiced killer named Raven, who was happy to kill anyone who got in his way—and even those who didn't.Someone was out to break the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association by any means ... and by hang rope or bullet, it didn't matter to them who had to die in the process.

It would have been funny if things weren't so serious.Savage was ready to go on with the gun duel when, through the rising dust and atop the false front of the general store on the south side of the square, he caught the glint of sunlight on gunmetal. He sighted the hunched figure of a man in military blue lining Jimmy Ringo up in his sights.And at the top of the street, uniformed figures on horseback appeared.Kirk was back!There was no time to shout a warning. Savage drew and fired. The sniper toppled and nose-dived twenty feet to the street. Realizing what was happening, Ringo cut loose as troopers charged, and in moments Ringo, Savage and Yaqui Joe were hightailing for the nearest exit from the square.

Her robe slipped from her shoulders and she stood naked before him. Savage reached for her gently, almost reverently. The light was turned down and a silver haze of moonlight drifted through the window of the hotel room."Help me forget, Clinton."

With yelps of triumph, the two surviving Comanches appeared on opposite sides of the staggering figure as Savage burst from the trees.He was so dazed he was unaware that the riders had been able to accurately trace his progress through the woods.He waited for the bullets to hit, but the Comanches weren't shooting. Instead they came charging down on him, screaming and brandishing their rifles, and an even more fearful thought than that of death hit him hard.They wanted to take him alive!And that would be worse than any death known to man.