The town was called Gentle Creek ... but by the time Blake Durant was finished with it, its waters ran red with blood.A land-hungry cattle baron called Jay Lucien ruled the town with a fist of iron. Anyone who didn't bow to his will was dealt with by gunfighter Rudy Dillen and his army of hardcases.Blake was just passing through when he witnessed the cold-blooded beating of a kid who had the nerve to ask Lucien to settle a debt. When he took the boy—or what was left of him—back home, he figured he'd done all he could. But there was no way he could ride on. His sense of justice just wouldn't allow it. Someone had to bring Jay Lucien down. But Blake was tough, he was determined, and he was lightning-fast with a gun.So he declared war on the bad men.All-out war.

Blake Durant helped push a herd of beef to Cannon Creek, where he got paid off and then decided to go his own way. Always a loner, he was happy to ride on and forget about the men he'd so recently ridden with.But then three of them were shot dead, and their money stolen.Blake couldn't allow that to go unavenged, so he set out to find and bring the killers back, dead or alive.The trail led him to the town of Forge, and another old acquaintance, Ed Ball. On the surface. Ball was a nice guy, a man to whom a smile always came easy, and who never let anything trouble him overmuch.But was Ball everything he seemed to be?Blake had never really known what to make of him ... except that he wouldn't trust Ed Ball not to back-shoot him if there was any profit in it.All at once the odds against him started stacking ever higher ...

The town had a problem.Years earlier, a cuckolded rancher named Duke Sabien had killed his wife and her lover on Main Street, then lit out. No one in town went after him. Instead, they tore down his fences and divided up his land and livestock between them ... and hoped never to see Sabien again.But Duke Sabien had other ideas.Every year thereafter he came back to town to settle things with the men who'd stolen his land. One by one, they died ... and the town began to live in dread of his next visit.Mostly recently Sabien robbed the bank and killed the three posse men who went after him. The local lawman asked Blake Durant to take them back to town while he continued his manhunt, and Blake was happy enough to help out. But instead, he bought into a mess of greed and murder that, in the end, only he could sort out.And he found a woman who might just take the place of Louise Yerby, the love he'd lost so many years earlier ...

It was said that a fortune in outlaw gold lay buried under the hill. Leastways, that's what Torp Berry and his gang of cutthroats believed. But they were damned if they'd clear that hill and shift all the rocks themselves. No – it was easier for them to waylay any passing strangers and set them to work instead ... at gunpoint.Into this situation rode Blake Durant. He'd come to deliver a message from a dead man. Next thing he knew, he was disarmed, half-starved, chained to a wall every freezing night and forced into hard labor or face Will Hapgood's deadly whip.So Blake bided his time. Right now he and the others were damned to a short, hard life of slavery. But when the day of the damned was over there would come another day ... one of reckoning!

Blake Durant wasn't looking for trouble, but as usual, trouble found him anyway. It came in the shape of a crusty old miner called Pete Doubell, who was outnumbered and under attack by a bunch of gunmen when Blake ran across him. Ever the loner, Blake wanted no part of it, but somehow he got drawn into a complicated web of lies, death and double-dealing. Along the way he locked horns with gunfighter Vance Carter, and vengeance-hungry Reke Bodie and his gun-hung crew. But when he looked into the eyes of Doubell's niece Christine, all the danger seemed a price worth paying ...

They said a king's ransom in gold was waiting to be found in Dog Valley. But none of the folks who went searching for it were ever seen again ...One of the missing fortune-hunters was a girl named Jane Berne, and when her elderly uncle rode into that desolate area to discover what had become of her, his trail crossed with that of Blake Durant, the man they called the Loner. Before they could team up and solve the mystery together, they ran into a religious fanatic named Gideon Sawyer and his four addle-brained sons ... and pretty soon after that found themselves sentenced to hang for what Sawyer considered to be their 'sins'.Suddenly the answer to the mystery of Dog Valley and the fate of the missing treasure-seekers became all too clear.And whether he liked it or not, the only way for Durant to survive and get revenge for the dead was to kill every last Sawyer in the valley ...

Ahead was a cold-blooded killer and an innocent woman who wanted to believe he was no such thing. Behind was a God-fearing tyrant by the name of Isaac Madie and Madie's three sons, all of them with vengeance in mind. And Blake Durant was caught smack in the middle.He wanted to rescue the woman and return a fortune in gold bullion to its rightful owners. But Madie had other ideas. And if it came to that, so did Ringo Nyall, the killer who'd set his mind on the gold ... and the girl!

When Blake Durant reached the town of Lincoln, he really should have just kept riding. But he didn't get the chance.Within moments of his arrival, a gun-tough named Nico Semole injured his horse and then tried to pick a fight with an old man. Blake stopped him and beat him to pulp.But Nico just didn't know when to quit. Later that day he came at Blake with a gun ... and set off a chain of events that was to end in murder and bloody revenge.Nico's brother Kent aimed to settle the account with Blake, and he had just enough gun-speed to do it. Furthermore, the local marshal was all burnt out, and Blake knew he couldn't rely on the man to keep the peace. So it looked as if the man they called The Loner would have to take matters into his own hands ... and when he did, there was gunsmoke in the air and dead men on the ground.

Blake Durant was on his way to Crimson Falls when he stopped by Jessica Gray's ranch for water. Before he could move on again, the young widow's son came galloping into the yard, badly beaten. Three men had stolen their two calves and beaten young Jess when he tried to stop them. Much as he knew he should just ride on, Blake knew he couldn't. So he stood shoulder to shoulder with the young widow and her son against a vicious land-baron with an army of gunnies on his payroll. And when the gunsmoke finally cleared, the winner would take all!

Blake Durant was on his way to an isolated wilderness owned by an old friend, Colonel Howie. But so was a wagon train led by a smooth-talking dude named Mike Stanton. Stanton intended to let his people settle on Howie's land ... land Howie himself guarded jealously. There was sure to be conflict, but somehow Stanton didn't seem to care about that – and Blake Durant couldn't help but wonder why ...The minute Blake rode in, Stanton sensed that he might be a threat to his plans, so he took steps to remove him by any means possible. What he didn't count on was a one-time soiled dove and her protector, a silent giant of a man who took whatever punishment was meted out to him and still came back for more.A woman, a man-monster ... and Blake Durant.Together they made a formidable team!

On the surface, the range up ahead seemed quiet and peaceful, but it was anything but.Jake Newell and his three shiftless sons were planning the biggest rustling job of their lives.Bart Lomax was forcing the smaller ranchers off their land by any means possible because he wanted it all.Les Ducane's wife had been raped and murdered, and her killer was still at large.And when Blake Durant found himself accused of the rape and murder, an old rival from the past seized the chance to find out once and for all which of them was faster with a gun ...After that there was only one certainty. That everything was about to blow sky high.

The town of Red Bend waited in fear.Mace Orde and his three hell-raising sons were coming to in settle some old scores, and not a man there seemed likely to stand up to them ... except Marshal Ben Karpel.Still, there wasn't much the ageing marshal could do against such ruthless killers. His beautiful daughter, Dell, was willing to pick up a gun and fight alongside him, but it wasn't until Blake Durant rode in that they really stood a chance of winning.When the marshal arrested Mace Orde, he knew they'd never hold him long enough for the circuit judge to get there and try him for murder. Orde's sons would bust him out just as soon as they could.That left only one option – to transport him across the desert to the larger town of Creede, where they had deputies who could guard him until the trial-date was set.All they had to do now – Durant, an ageing lawman and his daughter – was get Orde there in one piece, before his sons could...

It suited Blake Durant to ride alone, but when he came across two men and a woman whose wagon had broken down, he was equally happy to help get them moving again.The trio were headed for a town called Haven and a fresh start in life. But to reach the town, they first had to cross the desert. Durant was by no means sure they'd make it alone, so he decided to ride with them and make sure they reached their destination.Even so, the desert came close to killing them all. And when they finally reached Haven, they realized it was no such thing.That was when Durant found himself in a kill-or-be-killed showdown ... and that was when the shooting started!

Blake Durant didn't have anything against Tom Carne himself when he rode into Sage Creek. He took up for a woman who'd been wronged by a couple of Carne's men, and when justice was served, that should have been the end of it. But Carne thought otherwise.Carne was a vicious, natural-born killer and most of his gang was cut from the same cloth. So when Carne made it his business to make an example of Blake, they were with him all the way.Too bad.Blake Durant killed two of them and wounded a third. Then he and the woman he had sworn to protect took off across the desert, figuring to call in the authorities before Carne made good on his plan to take over and run the entire territory.Carne and his Raiders gave chase, and slowly but surely the gap between hunters and hunted narrowed until there was no option—Blake Durant had to fight for their lives, the only way he knew how.For keeps.

When Blake Durant rode into town that day, two men had already been shot dead. Within a matter of hours, a bunch of back-shooters tried to turn Durant into victim number three. They wrongly assumed he was in cahoots with a man called Moriarty, who planned to bring sheep into what had always been cattle country. But there was more to the town's trouble than a building range war.The Farrar clan, old Carver and his worthless sons Chris and Lom, planned to claim the territory for themselves, and they'd started with the cold-blooded murder of their neighbors, Ord Mann and his son Lee.That left Ord's daughter, Sally, all by herself ... and both Carver and Chris had plans for that pretty little filly.But something about Sally reminded Durant of the woman he'd loved and lost, and that made him want to protect her at any cost. Though he stood accused of murder himself, he decided to stick around until every last threat was neutralized.