The late eighteen hundreds was a time of growth and expansion in this great country. The land was open and wild. Often the land was waiting for the strong to take it and make something of it. It took courage just to keep it once it was settled. Laws were often few and far between. The law was often what man made of it. It was also a time when the land grew. Towns sprouted up all over the country and the stagecoaches tied them together with ribbons of narrow, often dangerous, roads. Often men hunted men for the bounty on their heads, while some hunted others so that justice could be met. The Old West is a collection of short stories that show what it took to build in the west. The stories show how men fought to survive, fought to bring law and order to a lawless land, and the perils that faced those who simply traveled across the land. The stories are fiction, yet they could have happened to any of the many souls that will never be known who reached out to the west for a better life.