Slocum takes no prisoners... Recovering from a streak of bad luck at five-card stud, John Slocum stops by a river in the Grand Tetons to fill his canteen—only to find three dead bodies floating downstream. Slocum knows to find another route. But a flash of silver from a rider upstream strikes his curiosity. The rider leads Slocum to a towering wooden gate strewn with armed guards. Slocum wants to turn back, but a man with a rifle appears and persuades him otherwise. When the guards demand he pay a steep toll or leave, he plays it smart. Waiting for nightfall, Slocum discovers a rotted hole in the gate and sneaks through. But the guards arrest him and take him to be judged by a man known as “the emperor.” When the judgment is “the pits,” Slocum’s left wondering what fate will meet him—and hoping for a change of luck…

Longarm teams up with a marshal’s daughter to avenge her father… Grief-stricken Arlis Pine blames Longarm for the death of her father. Marshal Alvin Pine ended up in a pine box after the Sager gang strung him up for arresting their leader Del Sager—and Longarm wasn’t around to stop them. Following his jailbreak, Del Sager is raising hell with his boys somewhere up in the Bear Lodge Mountains. Longarm is determined to make amends to the beautiful bereaved brunette and finish the job this time. But Arlis isn’t about to let him track down her father’s killers alone. Together the two are in for a hell of a ride…

The battle of Bentonville, the only major Civil War battle fought in North Carolina, was the Confederacy's last attempt to stop the devastating march of William Tecumseh Sherman's army north through the Carolinas. Despite their numerical disadvantage, General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate forces successfully ambushed one wing of Sherman's army on March 19, 1865 but were soon repulsed. For the Confederates, it was a heroic but futile effort to delay the inevitable: within a month, both Richmond and Raleigh had fallen, and Lee had surrendered.

Beginning in 1924, Proceedings are incorporated into the Apr. no.