Billy the Kid #40

Billy the Kid seeks a new kind of education at a frontier schoolhouse, trading honest work for lessons in reading and arithmetic—but his pursuit of learning collides with K.D. Peele, a gun-slinging bully who won't tolerate the schoolteacher's attention to his girl. When tensions explode into violence, young Billy must decide whether to walk away from his studies or stand his ground against a man determined to make him pay.

Billy the Kid crashes an elaborate wedding on a Mexican hacienda to rescue a young woman forced into marriage with a wealthy stranger—all because she's in love with someone else, and he promised to help. With armed sentries, her determined uncle, and time running out before the ceremony, Billy must get her away from the ranch and across the border before Sarguerra's gunmen catch them.

Gordie Bayliss is a mild-mannered farmer forced from his land by railroad baron Munson, who seizes his property for the rail line through Piute Canyon—and abducts his wife and child to ensure compliance. Transformed by loss into a shadow saboteur known as "the Ghost," Bayliss wages a cunning campaign of wreckage and delay against the railroad, using his wits and nerve to outmaneuver the men who destroyed his dream.

Billy the Kid takes a thousand-dollar contract from the ruthless Abe McCord to eliminate fourteen men standing in the way of McCord's empire—but Billy's got other plans when he discovers what kind of man McCord really is. After pocketing the advance and learning the names on the hit list, Billy tips off his targets and turns McCord's own hired guns against their boss, forcing a showdown in Quacho Basin where the outlaw's loyalty to the oppressed proves stronger than any paycheck.