Cheyenne Kid #14

When Tully Wade's gunmen kill the great warrior Limping Wolf to seize Apache land, the Cheyenne Kid honors his fallen friend by impersonating his ghost—but discovers someone else is also summoning the warrior's spirit to drive Wade's men away. As the line between deception and the supernatural blurs, the Cheyenne Kid must uncover who else walks in Limping Wolf's footsteps before Wade's empire-building scheme claims more lives.

The American Indian dominated the frontier as a supreme horseman, but his entire way of life depended on the buffalo—and when hide-hunters arrived with a lucrative scheme to slaughter the herds, they set in motion the destruction of a nation. In just a few years, what rifle and cavalry could not accomplish, the systematic killing of the buffalo would achieve, reshaping the fate of the Plains forever.

A timid schoolteacher named Jonathan Crews arrives in the frontier town of Miggsville expecting to build a new life, only to be run out by the brutal Kurt Miggs—the man who lured him west with a fraudulent job offer. Left to fend for himself on the prairie, Crews takes shelter in a cave and strikes an unlikely bargain with a rugged outlaw named Bud, who agrees to teach him survival, marksmanship, and frontier toughness in exchange for a winter's worth of labor. By spring, the tenderfoot has transformed into a capable frontiersman, and now he's ready to settle accounts with Miggs.

Don Roberts has staked everything on his remote ranch in the Rocky Mountains, but a massive silver-tip grizzly has already claimed one of his horses—and now the beast is hunting him down. Armed with only a single-shot rifle and no spare ammunition, Don tracks the giant bear through the wilderness, knowing winter's first blizzard could arrive at any moment and end his chances for good. When he finally faces off against the monster in a canyon, he discovers that survival might depend on something far more unexpected than firepower.

The Cheyenne Kid finds himself trapped in quicksand during a vengeance pursuit, only to be rescued by Kota and his band of renegade Apaches—outcasts hunted by their own people under the war chief Two Wolves. Realizing they've been framed for raids they didn't commit, the Kid joins forces with the renegades to expose Two Wolves' true crime: accepting payment from corrupt white men to drive honest ranchers from their land. Through combat and revelations, the Kid works to unite the Apache people and set things right.

In Powder Valley, the rich grassland that's sparked conflict for generations, the arrival of the mysterious farmer Boyer upends a scheme by the crooked Clem Vessel—who's hired gun-slinging "farmers" with forged deeds to drive out cattleman Rimfire John Davis and seize the valley for himself. When Boyer proves he holds a legitimate land claim and won't be intimidated, his simple stand for honest farming sets off a chain reaction that exposes Vessel's fraud to the wider world. As real farmers begin arriving to stake their claims, Vessel finds his empire of deception crumbling around him.

When John Chisolm's legendary cattle drive proves profitable, a young trail hand named Shep Cayton seizes the opportunity to build his own herd, recruiting unlikely cowhands and pushing thousands of wild longhorns northward toward the Kansas railheads despite river crossings, wandering steers, and Comanche trouble. After selling his cattle in Abilene for a handsome profit, Shep discovers that even a dude hardware salesman can catch the trail-driving fever—and decides to head back to Texas to do it all again.