Lon Pike hauled the body of a murdered deputy into town, then tackled a gun-wielding drunk who was out to shoot Marshal Everson. Council chairman Orville Tuft, whose bank has been robbed, wanted to make Lon Marshal instead of Everson, and Lon, inveigled by Tuft's pretty daughter Zinnia, agreed. However, on reflection, he decided it was smarter to take the deputy's job instead. But Everson looked increasingly likely to be in cahoots with the robbers – and he might just have sent the previous deputy to his death when he learned too much.

Buck Maxwell buys a hardware store and finds he is saddled with huge debt to a church building committee - money which had been in the care of the previous owner, has been stolen by Snake Ed McFee. Buck was ramrod of a spread in Bighorn country until the big die-up finished off the outfit, and used to dealing with problems the direct way. But now it's town rules, and the more he tries to go by them, the more things go wrong—and people die. In the end Buck lines up a row of coffins in front of his store and starts filling them.

The good old shoot 'em-up westerns still ride the range, and this collection is the first in the E.R. Slade Omnibus.A WAGON LOAD OF GOLDJeremy Waite is offered a quarter of a wagonload of gold in return for his services as a gunhand in recovering it. "Are you fast?" asked Leanda. Jeremy was fast enough to empty his gun into the side of a barn before it could rot away, but why should he elaborate to Leanda about that? The prospect of getting rich made Jeremy disinclined to question much ... until things heated up and he had to confront the girl's gun-fast boyfriend.GUNMAN'S GOLDMistaken for the notorious outlaw Chuck Riley, Clint Lee Calloway was arrested and sentenced to hang. But somehow he managed to break out of jail and escape into the desert. Now, thirsty and exhausted, he comes on Riley and his gang trying to make Carmen Haversam reveal the whereabouts of her dead father's gold. Lee isn't the man to slip away quietly, though he knows riding to the rescue will buy him plenty...

Blake Dixon raped and killed Clint Evans' wife. Clint's whole life is now about making Dixon pay. Felipe Gonzalez becomes his best lead to Dixon's whereabouts; but after Felipe's family is killed and he starts relishing his own revenge against the one man who may actually know where Dixon is, Clint is repelled by Felipe's grisly plans and has to decide whether or not to help Felipe get his revenge in order to have a chance at his own.