Charles Newman Heckelmann

"From the moment Jim Reed, a strange in the West, drove the Concord stage into the wild, wide-open town of Outpost, he was in constant danger. For in the stage were two dead men.

In April, 1862, the Civil War is just starting its second year of fighting. Riverboat owner and captain Bill Horn wanted to fight for the Union, but it was decided he could better serve his country by using the Western Star to ferry troops and supplies. Kay Graham, owner and pilot of the Queen, had been his biggest competitor for business on the river, but she too is now using her boat and skills for the Union. Jack Wade had always been a rival of Bill's. Bill assumed the hostility was rooted in jealousy since Bill was the son of a prosperous steamboat owner and Jack was the son of a poor sawmill worker. Wade had been responsible for wrecking one of Horn's steamships, then he'd stolen Horn's fiancée. When the Civil War started, Jack had gone to fight for the South, but he soon realized the South would never win and became the leader of a group of Jayhawkers. They try to cause as much trouble as they can for the Union while making a profit for themselves. When Horn and Graham are asked to take troops and supplies up the Missouri to Fort Union, where the 5th Cavalry will be launching a campaign against Chief Wild Horse and his Sioux, their paths will once again cross with Wade and his Jayhawkers in a struggle to survive.

Color illustration on front cover of European American cowboy firing his gun.

The Big Valley, is a tie in book, to the series The Big Valley, starring Lee Majors, Linda Evans, Richard Long, Peter Breck and Barbra Stanwyck. The series was about a ranching family named the Barkleys, who lived in Stockton, CA in the late 1800's. The Big Valley series showed what it was like to have a loving family, and it also expressed good morals. While the Barkleys were one of the leading ranch families at the time, they never forgot about one another in difficult times. Weather it was a flood, bullet wound, or earthquake, the Barkleys were always there for each other.

Tom Frazer, ramrod of Margo Nash's Double Y, had worked hard to keep the ranch going - now he was ready to fight hard to save it. But, as Tom was to discover, it's easier to fight an enemy than to fight a friend. Tom knew that Van Winston, the crooked rancher who owned the Circle W, was determined to take over the Double Y and add it to his holdings. What he didn't know was that his own closest friend, Bill Corey, was a member of a gang of rustlers whose raids were slowly destroying the Double Y.