William Colt MacDonald

The gang called themselves the Scorpions, and when they struck, they were as swift, silent and fatal as the vicious animals that inspired their name. They would loot and kill with abandon as they rode through Texas, and return with their ill-gotten booty to a hideout in Mexico. No one had ever dared to stop their lawless rampages, but their luck was running out. Tucson Smith was an easygoing sort -- slow-talking and not easily riled. He didn't make...

Winghorse was a wide-open town where gun law was the only law -- and where Reece Rudabaugh's fast, highly-paid gunslingers had formed a welcoming committee, ready at a moment's notice to blast anyone who dared to defy their land-hungry boss. Andy Farlow looked like just a saddle-weary, shiftless Texas ramrod when he rode into Winghorse. But he was a man with a mission, and he wasn't about to let anyone stop him from finding the 100,000 Spanish pesos...

Jake Glendon was dead. It could have been suicide -- but it looked a lot like murder. Either way, it was good news, so no one cared much one way or the other about the details. Folks would dance on his grave. But when the Three Mesquiteers -- Tucson Smith, Lullaby Joslin and Stony Brooke -- rode off after discovering the body, they had no idea that they had actually ridden into one of the toughest cases in their long career of unofficial outlaw-busting....

William Colt MacDonald has published nearly seventy Western novels to date, and over sixty motion pictures have been based on his Western fiction or the characters he created. Ten of these films starred or featured John Wayne. Both of the short novels included here were adapted for the screen. The Son of the Wolf was filmed as Wyoming Whirlwind, and Powder Smoke came to the screen as Man of Action.