ADAM STEELE
from the creator of EDGE
GEORGE G. GILMAN

40: THE SUNSET RIDE

This time he'd really been left holding the baby.

Somewhere between the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Nevadas, a trailside encounter with sudden death was about to force Adam Steele into learning a whole new set of survival skills.

Like diaper changing and hustling up a mess of warm milk. Like soothing and lulling and watching the cradle. Just the sort of thing to take a man’s mind off the nighttime dangers of outlaw territory.

And get him killed.

Published January 01, 2025
Recommended Price: £2.50

39: ROUGH JUSTICE

The sign at the town boundary read: ROSARITA—Pop. Growing Fast

Not a claim borne out by the deserted main — and only — street. Then a tolling bell and the sound of voices raised in a funeral hymn told Adam Steele that all Rosarita's humanlife was in church and that the town had recently suffered a net population loss of one.

Later he did not have to ask who shot the sheriff. It was in self-defense and the lawman was more creased than deceased. But with more killing to come, it soon became clear that most of the pains being suffered in the little Arizona town came not from growing but dying.

Published November 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

38: HIGH STAKES

Dead on time: the last train to Lantana Flats pulled slowly in.
Dead on the tracks: one old timer, a prospector.
Barely alive to his predicament the depot manager. With the railroad closing, he was out of a job and the Nevada desert wasn't exactly blooming with opportunities.
Alert as ever: Adam Steele, just ridden in on the train.
While up in the bare hills, a woman waited. Who might be able to show Steele a good and timely stash of gold. And, sure as hell, would introduce him to a whole hurricane of flying lead.

Published September 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

37: CANYON OF DEATH

Nothing was going right.

For a man who traveled alone and light, Adam Steele was well burdened with people and possessions: a wizened old-timer, a widow woman and all their worldly goods piled high on a wagon. Nice enough people but Steele was irked by them and their chatter.

It was the Apache brave who jumped Steele, disarmed him, held the woman hostage, who convinced Steele that things were going very wrong indeed.

And were just about to get worse.

Published July 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

36: THE HELLRAISERS

Three lbs. roasted coffee beans, Twelve home-made corn dodgers, Four lbs. of plain flour, Beef jerky, Beans ...

Adam Steele was doing the shopping. The girl, blonde and bright, checked off the rest of his list and started packing it all away in a gunny sack. The old man, her grandfather, looked proudly down at her as he rummaged around on a high shelf at the back of the little general store. Then brought out the special offer that might tempt the stranger who'd just ridden into the small town of Barclay, Texas.

... One 9mm Belgian Lefaucheux revolver, finely engraved ... His sales pitch was interrupted.

Three new customers. Who burst in and weren't about to wait their turn to be served. Who weren’t armed with shopping lists but with guns. Who wanted not provisions but money and didn't aim to pay but to kill.

Three masked men who didn't know that Steele was not a man to interrupt when he was going about his domestic chores.

Published May 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

35: STRANGER IN A STRANGE TOWN

Somewhere between Abilene and San Antonio Adam Steele became a man of property. Not a settled man — this property was as mobile as he was. Two of the finest white Arab stallions he'd ever seen, bought on an impulse at a trailside auction just outside the small town of Braddock, Texas. Two stallions that conferred on him a certain pride of possession as he led them into town.

Trouble was, the rule may be that possession is nine parts of the law but the law in Braddock was pretty unruly. And possession turned out to be strictly temporary — for Steele and for a whole succession of new owners. Most of whom found out that life could be a pretty temporary business as well.

Published March 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

34: THE RUNAWAY

For two bright kids traveling West with their parents in a covered wagon, there's plenty to see, moving slowly through the country, making camp at a different place every night: strange birds and flowers, animal life. The wild and wilderness scenery. All in all a whole lot of interesting stuff. Like right now they were peering down at a most intriguing trailside discovery. At something they'd never seen before. But knew pretty well what it was. A dead man. Called Adam Steele.

Filthy dirty, clothes sweated and grimed, blood, black and congealed, soaked through across the chest, a rope burn around the neck, flies gathering. Not too hard for a couple of bright kids to identify.

Except that even the most careful observer can make a mistake. Not dead. Just as near as dammit. Just enough life to feel the agony that seared through him at every shallow rasping breath. Not knowing that the kids had a father, a doctor, who might just be able to patch him up enough to face a hanging.

Published January 01, 2024
Recommended Price: £2.50

33: THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

For two bright kids traveling West with their parents in a covered wagon, there's plenty to see, moving slowly through the country, making camp at a different place every night: strange birds and flowers, animal life. The wild and wilderness scenery. All in all a whole lot of interesting stuff. Like right now they were peering down at a most intriguing trailside discovery. At something they'd never seen before. But knew pretty well what it was. A dead man. Called Adam Steele.

Filthy dirty, clothes sweated and grimed, blood, black and congealed, soaked through across the chest, a rope burn around the neck, flies gathering. Not too hard for a couple of bright kids to identify.

Except that even the most careful observer can make a mistake. Not dead. Just as near as dammit. Just enough life to feel the agony that seared through him at every shallow rasping breath. Not knowing that the kids had a father, a doctor, who might just be able to patch him up enough to face a hanging.

Published October 01, 2023
Recommended Price: £2.50

32: THE WRONG MAN

Northern California. Giant redwoods clinging to the slopes of the Costal Range as it drops down to the blue Pacific Ocean

Man stretched out on the wide deserted beach, right by the water's edge. Surf might be up but he's paying no mind. Not working on his tan either on account of his being fully dressed. Just lying there quite still on account of he's dead.

Bullet hole drilled clean between the shoulder blades. Near him his horse, a black gelding, edgy, close to being spooked., while another man, black hair, maybe some Apache blood in him, searching through the saddle bags. Hurried

A scene to freeze the blood of a man called Steele. Especially when he looks into the dead man's face and discovers his own double.

Published January 01, 2023
Recommended Price: £2.50

31: THE CHEATERS

Accord, Wyoming. To Steele it looked like some sort of ghost town. Nothing moving, no people, no horses, not even a cur dog. Nothing except the hot dry wind blowing down the one street, raising a little dust. His horse's hooves echoed ever-loud as he rode warily though.

Then, suddenly, Steele found people. A crowd gathered on the far side of town, watching. Under a tree a young fear-sweated cowhand waited, his wrists bound. From the tree dangled a rope.

Steele was just in time for the hanging, just in time to get involved in a range war that would stain too much bad blood across the good land.

Published November 01, 2022
Recommended Price: £2.50

30: THE KILLER MOUNTAINS

The black-clad preacher had led his people a long way: from Pennsylvania, across the prairies to the mountains of Montana. Led them trusting absolutely in the Lord to take care of them, tell them where to settle. They would ask help from no-one but the Lord.

And the renegade band of Paiute Indians who'd cornered them asked no help either, would help themselves to provisions, blankets, money and finally to the preacher's daughter. Took her, tied her stripped naked on the ground. Still the preacher forbade resistance for it was the Lord's will

That was when Steele took a hand. Didn't know much about the Lord's work but he knew the time had come to break His commandment about killing.

And broke it again and again ...

Published September 01, 2022
Recommended Price: £2.50

29: THE BIG PRIZE

Mesa, Colorado, was a nice town. Settled, growing, thriving. God-fearing on a Sunday, money-making of a weekday, the citizens grew carefully richer and their life had a pattern to it.

A pattern that Steele didn't fit. Not when he rode in, sweaty and shabby after too long on the trail, leading a gelding with two dead men lashed across the saddle.

Mesa, Colorado, drew back, squeamish and shocked at the blood dried black round the gunshot wounds, at the flies and the smell.

Until the news got around that there was a fortune buried out there in the hills. Then the niceness and the manners were stripped away to the bare bones of greed and hatred. And the citizens remembered how to kill.

Published July 01, 2022
Recommended Price: £2.50

28: STEELE'S WAR: THE STRANGER

Steele. Saloonkeeper, settled and accepted. Him and his wife. Until the stranger rode into town. A hard, silent man with an old newspaper photo all crumpled up in his hip pocket. A photo that just happened to show something from his past.

That was when Steele realized that there were two kinds of past. the past a man tries to forget, a past that forces itself into his sweat-soaked nightmares.

Memories of blood, pumping, hot, vivid red on Confederate gray. Of triumphant Rebel yells that rise horribly into death screams. And then there is the past you didn't know about. Until it rears up, sudden as a diamondback, and strikes to kill.



Published May 01, 2022
Recommended Price: £2.50