"I'll have your guts for guitar strings, Jeremy Six!"If you've ever seen a she-bear defend her cub against a pack of wolves, you'll know what Ma Marriner was like, only maybe she was bigger and meaner and the wolves were on her side.What the marshal of Spanish Flat had done was to shoot Ma's husband, Buel, while he was going about his business of robbing the town's bank. And neither Ma nor her ornery son Cleve were going to let that go unavenged. Especially when Jeremy Six had added insult to injury by tossing Cleve into the calaboose.So Ma gathered up the clan and all their thirty or more border-rider friends, and the whole pack of them set out for Spanish Flat to skin Jeremy's hide once and for all.

It started out with four drunken gunslingers raising the devil in a local saloon. Jeremy Six, marshal of Spanish Flat, knew it was going to be tough enough to silence that bunch.But Spanish Flat was in for more than just that little ruckus that night. The tough little crossroads town was in for a blizzard that would make the roads impassable, that would drive the temperature down to zero and the frustrated anger of its frontier toughs boiling.And then would come the refugees from the storm—the chilly-eyed killer riding in from the outlaw trail and the two-legged wolves from their rangeland hideouts.They'd all be playing hell in Spanish Flat. And if there was to be a town still standing there tomorrow, it would be up to Jeremy to survive ... the night it rained bullets!

Who Hired the Killer to Walk Our Streets?That was the headline of the Lodestar newspaper. The answer was Krayle MacIver.Krayle had hired the killer because he figured it was high time something was done about the trigger-happy band of toughs and bandits that were wrecking the town. The sheriff has proven helpless, so Krayle had sent for Ethan Scott.But once Scott was in town, the matter was out of anyone's hands. Scott was ruthless, efficient, and cool. Anyone who now tried to stop him would be just another target for his deadly bullets.And Krayle didn't know whether he was already marked for such a target.

Wade Cruze and his men were in Spanish Flat, waiting. As hardcase a crew as ever rode the Arizona range, they were loaded for bear. Because their herd was on its way to town also, but under another man's brand and prodded by an equally gun-quick crew. Marshal Six knew he'd need every bit of his trigger talent and lawman cunning to keep that restless bunch from shooting the town to pieces before their real targets arrived. The dispute was between two ranchers and it might be that both had right on their side, because it seemed to Six that there was an unknown third party prodding things along. If Six didn't move lightning fast at the exact right time, there was sure going to be a blood-red round up right in the center of Spanish Flat and maybe no town left by sunset.

Spanish Flat was a town balanced between high country and desert, between mines and ranches, between horsemen and hoemen, between the law-abiding and the naturally lawless. At any moment, the balance could shift and the place go up in gunsmoke. One man kept watch on that balance. His name was Jeremy Six and he wore the marshal's badge.But even the best lawman has to have a deputy—and when Jeremy's new segundo set out to even a few old scores with the owlhooters, it meant that the law itself in Spanish Flat had gone loco—and every badge was a fair target for a six-shooter.

While the blizzard raged outside, the cabin trembled, its beams creaking in the night. Thrown together by the storm and forced into each other's company, seven men and a girl strained against the intimate confinement, their nerves rubbed raw. There were the saddlebags full of gold, hidden somewhere on the premises. There was the feud between the rancher and the homesteader, ready to break out anew at any moment. There was the matter of the buffalo gun, which had already killed a deputy and could be brought out to kill again. And, above all, there was the half-breed girl, fair game for men who believed in taking what they wanted, at the point of a gun, if necessary. Two, three days? No one knew how long the storm would last. And nobody knew how long human nerves could stand the strain. All that was certain was that trouble would come—and someone would die!

"If the law's only wanted when it's convenient, then you can find yourself a marshal who thinks that way." Jeremy Six took his badge off, mounted his horse, and rode away from Spanish Flat. But habit lingers and a trained trigger finger gets itchy. So when Jeremy fell in with an odd pair—a greenhorn newspaperman and bespectacled ex-con—and the three were ambushed on the road to Rifle Gap, it proved beyond his ability to keep out of the action.

Three disasters hit the mountain town of Aztec at the same time:A blizzard had completely blocked the passes and cut the town off from all help.Curt Warren, the prospector the town had been grubstaking, was found bushwhacked while returning with big news.And a notorious outlaw and killer had been trapped in town by the big snow.It all added up to the biggest crisis of his career to Sheriff Morgan, especially since the outlaw – and suspected bushwhacker – was Morgan's own no-good brother!

In 1890, America was closing in on them. So there, on a piece of Arizonan land fit only for misfits, they built Ocotillo. And for that town of a thousand desperate men and women there was only one man for the High Sheriff of Mogollon County—Farris Rand. Tough enough to keep them in line and smart enough to keep the rest of the world out. But Farris Rand had something to hide. A mistake he'd made years ago. A mistake that one day rode into town with a gun and a vengeance. A mistake a man can pay for in only one way—with his life.

The band of rustlers that hung out in Dragoon Pass laughed at lawmen and their clumsy posses. All the rich ranches in the valley below were theirs for the raiding, including the one Ben McCracken ramrodded. But Ben was different from the usual run of cowmen—he knew all the owlhoot tricks just as well as they did— and maybe better. So when the longriders turned one of Ben's law traps into a shambles of gun-thunder and powdersmoke, Ben realized that now he'd have to pull out all the stops and show them what blazing fury could really be like.

It was called Mule Canyon, and it was one of those gold-boom towns in Colorado where men gathered quickly to make a fast fortune, and left just as suddenly. It drew all sorts—the greedy, the adventurous, the lawless—and Sam Calhoun.Calhoun was tough; he had lived his life through his gun, on the right side of the law. Now he figured it was time to make something of himself, and he figured Mule Canyon to be a good place to settle permanently.Only a bunch of road agents saw it differently. They were stealing half of the outgoing shipments of ore and doing a good job of destroying the town. Sam Calhoun reckoned he had a stake in their not succeeding.

It was a hot, summer in Spanish Flat, and Marshal Jeremy Six figured on the usual amount of trouble: liqored-up miners, brawls between farmers and cowhands, and a couple of scraps over girls or cards.Until Ben Sarasen rode into town...Something ugly was brewing and the mood of the town reflected it. Where Sarasen walked, so did trouble. And yet Jeremy couldn't help respecting the man ... almost liking him. But he knew that Oakley Madden's bunch were ripe to start something, and, if so, Sarasen was pretty sure to be involved in it.Then, Jeremy knew, there would have to be a showdown – and either he or Saracen wouldn't come out of it alive.

Logan was first to leave. Sick of living on the run, hiding his face in public, he dropped out, met a girl, and got married ... and then there were three.Then Bob got killed in a gun battle ... and then there were two.Joe, the youngest, took off on his own, searching for trouble and building a reputation as a vicious killer.Which left Emmett, the oldest. He had turned outlaw with his brothers when there seemed to be no other way ... but he had never killed. He couldn't understand the fates that drove Joe ... but he knew it was up to him to step in and stop his brother.Then fate brought the three brothers together in Arroyo Seco: Logan as a cowman, Joe as a hired gun for a sheep rancher ... and Emmett caught in the middle. Now it was brother against brother in a desperate fight to the death ... and which brother would Emmett have to join?

Wes Marriner was a hired gun, sharp, cautious, and skilled at killing. Yet he found there was such a thing as one job too many and too ugly for any amount of gold. But his decision to quit couldn't be final. Either he took the money and job, or someone else would be hired for it—with instructions to get rid of Wes first. And that someone else would be the one man in Arizona Territory with a faster draw and no heart left at all. There was one question he had to ask himself: was he willing to bet his life on it?