The half-breed Blue Pete and Rance Hewitt were old enemies and Rance was not the man to allow a debt of vengeance to go unpaid. Determined to get even with Pete, he laid a trap to take the half-breed across the border into Rance's own territory. The trick succeeded, and the two men came face to face in the way Rance liked to meet his enemies-he armed with a quirt, and his adversary securely trussed up against any possible reprisal. Pete took his beating with sullen hatred; silently swearing to return blow for blow until Rance cringed for mercy. The unofficial arrival of Mahon of the Mounties speeded the moment of retribution as he and Pete fought their way to freedom. But before they left, Pete levelled the score in a quick and ruthless reckoning.

In this new Luke Allan story Blue Pete, that indomitable half-breed who works in his own fashion to uphold the law guarded by the red-coated Mounties, returns back over the Canadian border to the vast wilderness of canyon and gulch that is the Badlands of Montana. He is trailing a bunch of horse-thieves who have cut into the herds of the Lazy M and on their furtive way back to the border have stolen Whiskers, Blue Pete's celebrated pinto pony. It is war to the death, with Blue Pete's old friend Sergeant Mahon of the Mounties doffing his red coat and following a trail that is blazed by the fury of the half-breed's vengeance.

When Blue Pete intervened with the enraged ranchers to save Butch Dorman from the revenge he so richly deserved, Pete immediately became an object of suspicion himself. That suited Pete, because, although it meant hitting the lone trail in a hail of bullets, he saw a chance of the big reward offered for the capture of the rustlers whose depredations were making the ranchers desperate. But neither he, the ranchers, the rustlers nor the Mounties quite anticipated the climax of his daring escapade. This new Western yarn, in which Blue Pete, the most popular of all cowboy characters, scores all along the line, is the most thrilling of any that the author has yet written.

Few men reckoned on staying up in the Cypress Hills unless they needed a hide-out real bad. So when Blue Pete heard one night a wolf's cry from the hills that no wolf had throated, he figured he'd go on up and see who was hollering and why. And that started Pete on the trigger-taut tracking of the toughest and strangest bunch of bank-busters that had menaced Medicine Hat for quite a while. But Pete discovered too much, and the man who did that in the Cypress Hills usually lasted about as long as a stockyard steer. Another grand, action-paced yarn of the ever popular Blue Pete.

What this story is about The stranger in town would have been in a bad way had not Blue Pete intervened. Bruiser Salmon, who was dealing out the punishment, didn't take kindly to Pete's action but the 'forty-five' the half-breed nonchalantly fingered commanded obedience. Salmon swore to get even with Blue Pete. But Pete, scarred from a hundred fights, was not the man to be cowed by threats, especially when he heard the stranger's tale of a missing heir and of Salmon's part in a stick-at-nothing plot to gain a fortune. How Blue Pete settled the score and meted out his own kind of justice, is told in this action-paced story of flaying fists and burning bullets.

Blue Pete, in his role of undercover helper of the RCMP, once more sets out to bring justice and retribution to a group of bank-robbers who had held up a bank in Red Deer. Ring-leader of the bandits is Flying Cloud, an Indian with a forked tongue, who tries to outwit the half-breed on his trail and in doing so start a feud between two neighbouring camps. Mountain Stream, a wise chief, sees through Flying Cloud's game, and his friendship for Blue Pete remains unshaken. But Brown Tepee is won over by Flying Cloud's easy promises. He overcomes his fear of the long arm of the Mounties, and joins forces with Flying Cloud. But Blue Pete is more than a match for both of them. Time and again he foils their cunning moves to destroy him and his friends, and finally he is able to defeat them in the very moment of their triumph. Yet even Blue Pete has to learn afresh that he cannot accomplish all he sets out to do without help from Mira, the amazing white woman who married him and shares his wild, untamed life.

A bitter enemy of Blue Pete, Bill Scarway, the murderous fast-shooting outlaw, escapes the Mounties to Medicine Hat-to ride, as "Trigger" Sallows, for the Diamond K outfit. Inspector Barker, determined to get the elusive Scarway, dead or alive, asks Blue Pete to help capture him. Blue Pete-his own private score to settle with Scarway-refuses, though he knows that killing and cattle-rustling inevitably follow the outlaw's trail. In the great spring round-up near the Cypress Hills the stage is cunningly set for the show-down. Scarway, ace gunman, faces for the first time on equal terms the death-dealing guns of Blue Pete.

Blue Pete was not a rancher-with that Indian blood he had to have some excitement in his life. Inspector Barker makes Blue Pete and unofficial detective to do a task that the North-west Mounted Police cannot officially, lawfully, fulfill. This job takes Blue Pete west past Fitzhugh (Jasper, today), past the British Columbia border wherein the Mounties have no authority to work. Here Pete makes too many new 'friends', each of which may be a deadly enemy! Life in the end-of-steel village is exciting, even without his detective work!

WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT As much to serve his own ends as to help the authorities Blue Pete went to the aid of the Mounties in rounding up a mysterious cattle rustler who did not shrink even from murder. How, with his characteristic genius for finding trouble, Blue Pete was soon at grips with his old friend Sergeant Mahon; how he saved the Sergeant's life and all but lost his own; and how as a result of his efforts he was himself arrested for murder only to be ultimately vindicated are stirringly told in this grand, hundred-thrills-a-minute yarn. "The most popular cowboy character in fiction," is how Truth describes Blue Pete. "Mr. Allan has the technique of the Wild West at his finger tips"-an opinion which is amply confirmed by this rollicking, swift-moving narrative of the great open spaces.

Once again Blue Pete features in this high-speed Western. As usual, on the side of border justice, he is marked down by his enemies for vengeance; and Pete, taking the law into his own hands, is hunted by the Mounted Police. On the prairies and mountain trails of the border a desperate double duel of wits and guns is fought out but the tough little half-breed finally triumphs in spite of the Mounties misgivings.