Bill Pronzini has been writing westerns throughout his long and varied career, and this volume collects the author's best.

Here are stories peopled by such familiar figures as lawmen, ranchers, cowhands, gamblers, detectives, newspapermen, gunfighters and timberjacks; and by such less utilized characters as stable hands, ferry tenders, writers, bartenders, saddle makers, tramp printers, confidence men, traveling dentists, moonshiners and patent medicine drummers.

Here are stories set in small, imaginary Montana towns and ranches to actual locales such as the California Mother Lode, the Sacramento River delta, and the Oregon wilderness.

Here are stories that run the gamut from dark character studies to stories of action, mystery and adventure to lighthearted tall tales.

"Burglarproof" features John Quincannon, the male half of the 1890s firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. "McIntosh's Chute" tells of the hardships faced by a deep woods logging gang and the fitting vengeance they enact on its tyrannical leader.

"Crucifixion River" is a collaborative novella set in and around a delta slough ferry crossing, and earned Pronzini and his wife Marcia Muller a 2008 Western Writers of America Spur Award for the best short fiction published the previous year. A new story, "A Cruel and Deadly Winter," shares a dying man's thoughts as he contemplates the life he leaves behind.

And then there's "The Hanging Man"...