A Mountain Man And The War Between The States

A Mountain Man and the War Between the States follows the life of William Taylor (Billy T.) Ware. The son of a farmer in Western Virginia (now West Virginia), Billy T. was only 19 when he joined the Confederate States Army soon after the State of Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861. The first year of the war he fought in the mountains of Pocahontas County near his home in Randolph County. Fighting under General Robert E. Lee, he saw action led by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign and fought in other battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg. Captured at the Battle of the Wilderness in May of 1864, he was imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland. The last nine months of the war he was held at the notorious Elmira Prison in New York. Following his experiences during the war and his life after he returned home, the reader may come to understand why this mountain man fought for the South and the price he paid.

To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung mountain men who, like the legendary Jeremiah Johnson, were real buckskin survivalists. Preceded only by Lewis and Clark, beaver fur trappers roamed the river valleys and mountain ranges of the West, living on fish and game, fighting or trading with the Native Americans, and forever heading toward the untamed wilderness. In this story of rough, heroic men and their worlds, Laycock weaves historical facts and practical instruction with profiles of individual trappers, including harrowing escapes, feats of supreme courage and endurance, and sometimes violent encounters with grizzly bears and Native Americans.

Big Max Higgins ran the outlaw town of Hell's Creek up in the north Montana Rockies ... and he decided to include the nearby town of Barlow in his cutthroat operation. What he didn't know was that Smoke Jensen was there with his wife, visiting relatives.

USA Today bestselling author: Smoke Jensen aims to bring justice to a town taken over by the lawless—with a little help from his .45 . . . A short ride to hell Outlaw Joe Wales has a score to settle in Pueblo: find Jacob Murdock and the band of vaqueros who attacked his wife and drown them in their own stinking blood. But when Wales's hunting party is ambushed, the only gunfighter he can count on for cover is Smoke Jensen, the trigger-ready legend of the High Lonesome. Jensen's more than willing to strap on a brace of .45s to help out his friend—especially if it involves nailing some dirty renegades to the wall. Things are tougher than Jensen imagined. Murdock and his men aren't just hiding out in Pueblo—they've taken it over. Outnumbered in a town of desperados, Smoke is numero uno on Murdock's most-wanted list. But even with a price on his head, Smoke can still dole out his own unforgiving brand of justice. And when the sun goes down, he's going to take them on one by one, and blow each and every hide back to hell.

USA Today bestselling author: Smoke Jensen has taken on plenty of outlaws—but this time, it's personal . . . Big Max Higgins ran the outlaw town of Hell's Creek up in the north Montana Rockies—and then he decided to include the nearby town of Barlow in his cutthroat operation. What he didn't know was that Smoke Jensen was there with his wife, visiting relatives. It didn't take Smoke long to rout out the lot of them with angry fists and blazing guns . . . but Smoke didn't count on Big Max doing something as daring, desperate, and stupid as kidnapping his wife—and demanding the town of Barlow itself as ransom. Soon Big Max Higgins would look up and see the last mountain man riding down the middle of the street with reins in his teeth and both hands filled with .44s. Big Max had always wanted to make a name for himself. And he was going to get it, too—carved on his gravestone.

Criminals draw the wrath of a retired gunfighter after shooting his wife in this western by a USA Today–bestselling author of War of the Mountain Man. Lee Slater and his gang of lowlife desperadoes didn’t know that Smoke Jensen had given up his gunslinger status to become a family man. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble was their first mistake. Shooting Smoke’s wife Sally was their second. Chances are, they’re not going to live to make a third.

In this western by the bestselling author of Return of the Mountain Man, legendary gunslingers unite to save a beleaguered mining town. When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune . . . until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold’s closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike—which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They’re looking to get rich quick . . . and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight—and this one promises to be a whopper. Outnumbered a hundred to one, he recruits an army of his own: twenty aging but still lethal legends of the frontier of the frontier in the violent sunset of their grizzled lives. One thing you can count on: There’s going to be a lot of blood spilled before anyone walks away with the gold.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark set out to find the fabled Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Though they never found it -- or the lost tribes of Israel, rumored to be living in the Great American Desert --- they did discover that the entire region west of the Mississippi was swarming with beaver. And so began the American fur trade, as the first tough trappers headed out to make their fortunes in beaver pelts.