Stage Trails West Western Stories
Grif Holbrook is a hard-bitten an dsalty yet kind-hearted veteran of the stage trails. He worked as a shotgun guard and trouble-shooter for the butterfield line in the years before the War Between the States. Weary of the life, Grif wants nothing more than to find "a red-haird widder woman" and settle down. But stagin gis in his blood, and he loves a challenge. These four short stories of Holbrook's adventures are pure action fare, lightning-paced an dfilled with vivid characters, flashing fists, and blazing six-guns. In "Hell Along the Oxbow Route," he deals with a gang of Copperheads bent on seizing control of John Butterfield's stage line for the Confederacy. Ben Holladay has gained control of Butterfield's in "Bullets Blaze the Stage Trails," and he sends Holbrook to negotiate the purchase of two small stage outfits in order to give the Union Army a toll-free route to Sacramento. threee years later, his staging days almost ended by in the imminent completion of the Union Pacific railroad, Holbrook is recrited as a "U.P. Trailbreaker." Finally, "The buckskin-Poppers' War" finds Grif back in staging, this time as a partner with Kate Gillison in the short-line Mountain Stage Company.