It was a case of mistaken identity when Galloway's two lawmen arrested Hank Brazos on a charge of rustling. Brazos went quietly, sure that his saddle pard, Duke Benedict, would soon arrive to help him clear everything up. But the law had other ideas. No ifs, no buts ... Hank Brazos was going to stay behind bars until the circuit judge could find him guilty and sentence him to hang!Benedict could always help the big Texan escape ... but if things went wrong, it might come to gunplay and innocent parties could die. So he decided to take a different route – to ride solo and find and arrest the real culprits himself.Trouble was, to stand any chance of success, he had to swap one partner for another ... in this case, Brazos' irascible hound, Bullpup!

It had been months since Brazos and Benedict had started their search for Bo Rangle, the outlaw who'd killed most of their comrades in the War and stolen a fortune in gold while they were at it. But the west was a big place and Rangle could have gone anywhere. Then they chanced upon the best lead they'd had in months ... the only trouble was that Race Sackett, the man who could take them right to Rangle, was behind bars, awaiting a noose. There was only one thing to do ... bust the outlaw out and force him to take them to Rangle's lair. But that was going to be easier said than done ...

The sheriff of Tumbleweed took an instant dislike to Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos. The dude and the giant in the garish purple shirt looked like trouble to him. So he gave them one-way tickets for the next stage out to Flintlock ... and that's when the trouble really began. The minute it left town, the stagecoach became a target. Among the other passengers was a federal marshal delivering his prisoner, notorious outlaw Jack Savage, to Flintlock for trial. But Savage's gang had other ideas. They planned to stop the stage and rescue him, even if they had to kill everyone else on board. They reckoned without Benedict and Brazos, and when the stranded passengers took refuge in a deserted town called Buckaroo, they found themselves up against hot lead, and stone-cold ghosts from the past!

Savage kept right on running as though the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels, so fast in fact that the big sombrero tumbled off just as he raced beneath a light."It is Savage!"Suddenly there was gunfire in the valley night, the wicked lead droning around him as he did an impression of an antelope in full flight.The wild shooting didn't hurt him, but the fall did. In the darkness, he ran headlong into a pit as dark as a pawnbroker's soul. He cartwheeled and cracked his head against a large stone that didn't give an inch. The sky seemed full of shooting stars and Roman candles as he clawed his way out the far side, cursing like a muleskinner. What price excitement now, Savage? And where had he left Stud? His brain was so addled he couldn't remember, and the loud voices and the thump of running feet drew closer.

To fill their empty pockets, Benedict and Brazos turned bounty hunter, their mission to bring in a kill-crazy maniac called Billy Quinn, dead or alive. All the signs suggested that Quinn had taken up residence in a dead-end town called Babylon.But there was more to Babylon than met the eye. The law was administered by Bourne Murdock and his three brothers, and some said they enforced it a mite too heavily.There was also a rumor that Bourne had framed a man named Tom Sudden five years earlier, and had him packed off to the State Penitentiary ... leaving Bourne himself free to romance Sudden's girl and eventually marry her.Few people knew the real truth. All the townsfolk knew right now was that Sudden's sentence had run its course, he was free again, and heading back to Babylon for a final showdown ... and he was bringing four of the toughest gunmen right along with him ... If Benedict and Brazos got in his way well, they'll just have to die!

Benedict and Brazos had seen it all before—a supposedly genuine treasure map pointing to a priceless, solid gold statuette down in Old Mexico. According to legend, the Golden Virgin of Santo Sabinas had been hidden away in a spooky, disused monastery deep in the Sierra Espantosa, a vast range of almost impenetrable mountains that were said to be ... haunted!It was all hogwash, of course. But there was something about the map that looked genuine. And for a half-share in whatever treasure they managed to find, Benedict and Brazos decided to team up with two hard-luck brothers and a small boy who quickly began to idolize gun-swift Benedict.There was just one problem.Other greedier, crueler men also had their eyes on the Golden Virgin, as did a merciless colonel of Federales. And one way or another, he was going to have it ... even if it meant torturing Brazos half to death ... and then threatening to execute the child!

The town of Glory was anything but glorious. It was actually a town filled with fear—fear of the wild Yellow House River bunch, and an outlaw gang led by Ben Hollister, a bad man they called the Living Legend for his gun-speed.Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos had no intention of buying into Glory's troubles. All they wanted was a lead on Bo Rangle, the man they were hunting.But then a good man was shot dead by the Yellow House boys.That's when Benedict pinned on the town marshal's badge and together he and Brazos set about restoring law and order.With the Yellow House gang dealt with, there was still the matter of Ben Hollister, and a schemer in the shadows saw to it that he and Benedict would eventually clash.It was a showdown Benedict would have done anything to avoid. Because he and Holliday had once been friends. And it was the Living Legend who'd taught him everything he knew about guns, and how to use them.

Back East, Duke Benedict's wealthy family believed he was a prominent lawyer who moved among the wild west's rich and the famous. So when his father proposed to pay him a visit in the rough-and-ready town of Rawhide, Duke had to think fast. It would kill his old man to discover that Duke was in reality a footloose gambler, womanizer and slick-as-lightning gunfighter.And so the pretence began.Duke Benedict took over the practice of his lawyer friend Otto Lanning, and his partner, Hank Brazos, took Lanning up into the hills to enjoy a little hunting.Too bad all hell chose exactly that moment to break loose.A mysterious preacher came to town with a whispering albino gunman in tow, their plan to set the good folks of Rawhide against each other until the town tore itself apart. Only then would the preacher have his revenge for something that had happened in the recent past.With Duke's hands tied as he pretended to be little more than an attorney, and...

During the War Between the States, landowner Stanton Claiborne had served the Confederacy with distinction. And though the South had lost that conflict, Claiborne moved his family smack into the heart of Union country at war's end. The Northerners there – supposedly the victors – were living a hand-to-mouth existence. They didn't take kindly to a rich Southerner coming into their domain and lording it over them.So the stage was set for war ... a war that Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos unwittingly rode straight into.But the trouble wasn't all Claiborne's doing. There were unseen forces at work in the town of Resurrection who were determined to make the Southerner and his family suffer for their own gain. And before peace was declared again, men would die ... and one in particular would die a death that was both shocking and tragic.

He put his arms around her and rubbed her back, like a man trying to warm his hands. She seemed to like it, so Savage rubbed some more, giving his hands more latitude. Marylou sighed and grew warm against him. She gave a startled gasp when his lips found hers; she hadn't even considered the possibility of anything romantic, what with her father snoring not a hundred feet away, and two men laying dead close by. Once implanted, however, the notion took hold of her swiftly. It was no time at all before Clint Savage found that another of his hunches had come true.There was nothing under her robe but her sweet, soft body.

Down on their luck, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos were forced to take jobs herding cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. It was no hardship for Brazos—he'd more or less been born in the saddle and was cowboy all the way through. But Benedict ... well, Benedict appreciated the finer things in life.So on impulse he quit the drive and headed for Abilene by himself, hoping to find himself a high-stakes poker game and a willing woman or two.What he found instead was a town under siege by the hell-raising Texas cowboys who wanted to let of steam at trail's end and didn't care who got injured along the way.Many men had worn the marshal's star in Abilene ... and many had failed to bring law and order to the town.Now it was Duke Benedict's turn.And plenty of blood would be spilled before the wild men of Texas learned that when Benedict wore a star, he meant business.

The note just about summed it up."Señor Benedict is now my prisoner and will be held for ransom. You will ride to Panhandle, New Mexico, and wire the Americano's rich father in Boston. He is to wire back the sum of fifty thousand dollars care of Señor Montoya. If you fail to do this or if the rich man does not pay, Benedict will be shot. If you do as I say he will be freed unharmed."Although the note was unsigned, it had come from a psychopathic bandit-turned-revolutionary named Paulo Parada. And from everything Hank Brazos learned about him, Parada's word was worthless. He killed men just for the pleasure of seeing them fall ... which meant that his partner, Duke Benedict, would end up as just another notch on Parada's gun whether the ransom was paid or not ...

Accused of stagecoach robbery, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos had no choice but to run for their lives. It was just plain bad fortune that in so doing they ran smack into a wagon train heading across the desert for a mining town called Tarbuck.The wagon train was no ordinary outfit. It was made up of forty women, all bound for Tarbuck to meet the men they'd agreed by mail to marry.Big Rosie Moriarty immediately took a shine to Brazos ... but Benedict's attention was taken by the beautiful Libby Blue.There was just one problem.A kill-crazy outlaw called Kain Ketchell had broken out of prison with one goal in mind – to kill Libby, the woman he blamed for his arrest and incarceration. And nobody killed like Ketchell!

The plan was simple. Duke Benedict would stay in Nogales and build up a stake from his poker winnings, while Hank Brazos ran a string of horses south into Mexico. When they were financially solvent again, they'd reward themselves with a long, restful vacation. But they didn't count on Brazos getting himself arrested and sentenced to hang on a trumped-up murder charge. From that moment forward, Benedict had only one priority—to save his partner from a necktie social. To do just that, he agreed to throw in with a fearsome bounty hunter named Branch Lucas, who was in Mexico on business of his own. That business concerned a man called Diablo—a man of the people, who intended to free Toltepec Province from the yoke of slavery and had an entire army of renegades at his disposal. When Benedict and Brazos threw in with that army, the flame was lit, and the powder keg that was Toltepec Province was ready to explode!

Savage made a wild grab for the door but found it locked. He ducked instinctively as Colt thunder erupted beneath him. A bullet burned his forearm as Savage yelled to Angela to open the door. But it remained steadfastly shut while a badly-leaking Johnny Dukes was doing his level best to knock him off the landing.Only one thing left to do.Getting his back against the wall, Savage braced his boots against the heavy rail, summoned every ounce of strength and bad temper, and heaved.For several seconds, with the Texan still firing at him like a fool, it seemed the stairs were going to hold. Savage gave it the last of what he had. A tearing sound was followed by the groan of protesting timbers and next moment Savage was hanging by one hand to a brass door handle as half a ton of staircase plummeted thirty feet into the alleyway below.