SUGARFOOT [The Arizona Quartet, Book 3] by Clarence Budington Kelland

When two men hate each other to the utmost—and love the same woman just as passionately—not even the vastness of Arizona can hold them!

"A story of pioneer Arizona, after the Civil War. Jackson Redan, of gentle southern blood, learns the hard way when he comes to Prescott. His mentors are a wise Jewish merchant, a far seeing saloon owner, an outspoken landlady, and his enemy, Jacob Stint, given to lawlessness and ruthlessness. Their quarrel comes to a head over Reva, singing in the saloon, but wanting a respectable life, which "Sugarfoot" can give her once he has beaten Stint. Good workmanlike job of action and color." —Kirkus Reviews

Into Arizona, untamed frontier of outlaws, schemers and gambling halls, came:

SUGARFOOT JACK REDAN, ex-soldier, fresh out of the aristocracy of the south, eager for a place in this raw, barren land;

JACOB STINT, shrewd, ruthless brawler, lusting for a new world to conquer;

REVA CARIN, who sang in the town's most famous saloon—but she was no saloon-girl, even if the ladies of Prescott shifted their skirts aside when she walked by…

Drawn together by bonds of hate, love, lust and desire for their own place in the vast lands of the West, all three would be present at the frontier's most terrifying shootout.

***

There were snickers, some muffled, some outright, when Jack Redan, a seeming dandy whose manners stemmed from a life of leisure in the aristocracy of the South, arrived in the brawling little Arizona boom town of Prescott. He was quickly nicknamed Sugarfoot—AKA greenhorn dude—and everybody got ready for the sport that would surely follow the christening.

Nobody figured on Sugarfoot. Nobody except Riva Carin, whom he professed to love—but who understood that word very differently than he did. Riva wondered if he could ever understand she was not a woman to be protected and pampered, but one who wanted to stand beside a man as an equal partner in life. None of the rest of Prescott realized the steel he had become during the late Civil War. None of them expected him to stun the whole of Arizona with his lightning fists and the speed of his draw. And nobody, not even Sugarfoot himself, gave him a ghost of a chance when the three men whose lust for power he dared oppose trapped him in a tiny room, guns drawn, cold-blooded killing in their eyes.

"Mr. Kelland delineates the emotions of his lovers with a psychological penetration exceptional in Western fiction narratives, and shows equal craftsmanship in the action scenes." —The New York Times

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About the Author

Clarence Budington Kelland was author of nearly 100 novels of mystery and romantic suspense, had enough careers for several men: attorney, reporter, manufacturer of clothespins, director of a major newspaper group, and more. Kelland became best known as a fiction writer, penning some 100 novels, and selling them as serials to the biggest and highest paying magazines of the time—like The Saturday Evening Post, The American Magazine, Colliers, and Cosmopolitan. Many were immortalized on film, of which the romantic suspense comedy and Oscar-winner, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, is undoubtedly the most famous. Kelland appeared alongside Agatha Christie, Rex Stout and Erle Stanley Gardner in the same magazines, but was the most popular of the four. The New York Times described Kelland’s novels as “lively stories, designed to prick the jaded palate, that keep readers pleasantly entertained” and noted that “Kelland demonstrates the emotions of his lovers with a psychological penetration.” Kirkus Reviews called his novels “Bright and breezy, with plus appeal for murder-mystery addicts.” His magazine publishers kept besieging him for more novels because every time they serialized one of them (typically in 6-8 installments), circulation shot upward. Kelland obliged, and produced far more each year than his publisher (Harper and Row) could keep up with, leaving more than three dozen unpublished in book form when he died. His inimitable characters, trademark dialogue and deftly plotted stories, according to Harper, “made him an American tradition and won him more loyal, devoted readers than almost any other living author.” Kelland, as ever self-depreciating, simply described himself as “the best second-rate writer in the world.” His legions of fans, old and new, would likely disagree. There was nothing second-rate about his work.