These are the men who created the Western, shaped it, and perfected it. The Golden West collects three of their finest short novels. Max Brand's powerful Jargan is carefully restored to its original, full-length glory, with material never before seen. Tappan's Burro has long been considered one of Zane Grey's masterpieces, but only a shorter, edited version has been in print. The version included here was taken directly from Grey's actual manuscript. Louis L'Amour's The Trail to Crazy Man was rewritten years later as Crossfire Trail, which became the basis for the movie of the same name. Presented here is L'Amour's original version. These authors are the stuff of Western legend, and at last you can read their finest work as they themselves intended.

    . . THE LEGEND BEGINS When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than 40,000 acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse. But still, the Ridgeways were determined to make the Rocking R a success—and a home—for their four remarkable children: Percy, Eli, Abigail, and Rachel. This is their story. Together, the Ridgeways could endure anything. Floods, tornadoes, Commanche raids in the dead of night. But when one of their own is kidnapped . . . that’s when all hell breaks loose. This is their story. The story of the American West.

    Now three of their best short novels are collected in a single volume. Zane Grey’s From Missouri has been restored from the author’s own manuscript and is appearing in paperback in its corrected form. Max Brand’s Over the Northern Border is a classic tale of stage coach robbery and relentless pursuit, also corrected and restored from the author’s original manuscript. Louis L’Amour’s Riders of the Dawn debuted in Giant Western magazine in 1951 and appears here in that original version, as L’Amour himself first intended it. Enjoy these three classic tales and experience the Western the way it was meant to be.

    Warren Neale is a brilliant civil engineer who is constantly confronted with construction problems. He is sided by Larry Red King, a Texas gunfighter and friend. Allie Lee, who is heading east from California on a wagon train, is the sole survivor of an Indian raid in the Black Hills. Neale and a small company of US cavalry find Allie hidden at the scene and nearly out of her mind in terror. Al Slingerland, a trapper and buffalo hunter, has a cabin in a nearby valley, and Allie is taken there to recover.Benton is the wild town set up overnight to service the vices of the multitude of railroad workers. The only law is that which the soldiers impose, but their concern is not really in enforcing law in Benton, but in protecting the men laying the tracks and the supply trains. In addition to the natural obstacles that impede the building of the Union Pacific, workers must contend with the equally great weight of constant graft and corruption, against which Larry Red King’s guns can afford no protection.In this magnificent panorama of constant danger and adventure, the many lives involved, including ruthless gamblers and women of the evening, and the slow but monumental progress of the laying of the track through the wilderness, Zane Grey vividly brings to life a lost time and society in a grand novel, now published as he had first written it.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.