TEXAS GUN [West of the Wide Missouri] by Philip Ketchum

WHEN A TEXAN GETS TOUGH

There was a three-cornered war smoldering in the Gros Venture Valley between Otho Gilliam, Aaron Quinn and Dan Bellamy. Bellamy’s title to the range was oldest, but he was being pressed hard by Gilliam and Quinn’s larger spreads and gun-wielding riders. Folks said that when Gilliam and Quinn had beaten Bellamy, they would fight it out for ownership of all the land in the valley.

Into this hotbed rode a stranger, a Texan with a gun who called himself Connell—and immediately the bidding began for his skill as a pistolero. But Connell was interested in two things only: the truth behind how his father died, and vengeance. It wasn’t a truth anyone seemed willing to confess.

Connell was in town only two hours, but it was plenty of time to turn down two offers to hire out as a gunfighter, wipe up the saloon floor with the town bully, be stripped of his .45, pistol-whipped, and ordered to leave town. But even as he rode out of town, reeling in the saddle, he planned to return. It took more than that to scare off a man from Texas—and Connell was Texas born.

Dan Bellamy and his daughter Morgana found Connell half-conscious, falling from his horse. Bellamy saw the Texan as a likely answer to his problems. Connell accepted Bellamy’s hospitality, though he had no stake in the outcome of the range fight. He was after his father’s killers—plain and simple.

Morgana Bellamy and Connell soon discovered a growing attraction to each other, but Allan, Quinn’s son, was making a play for her, with marriage in mind. Morgana wasn’t in love with Allan, but she’d marry him, if that’s what it took to make her father grant grazing rights to Quinn. While her father claimed ownership of the valley and withheld those rights, his life was in peril. While vengeance was foremost on Connell’s mind, Morgana wouldn’t be swayed by her feelings for him.

Gilliam and Quinn thought they had rid themselves of Connell when they took his gun, had him beaten, and thrown out of town! But Connell was a Texan and Texans didn’t run. Instead he got his gun back, and when the smoke cleared away the whole kill-crazy range wanted nothing more than peace and quiet—and an end to gunplay for all time!

In this exciting Philip Ketchum western classic you will find:

Aaron Quinn dreamed of controlling the valley—but not that his darkest secret would come back to haunt and then hunt him.

Allan Quinn tried to live up to what his father wanted, but that didn’t mean he had to agree with what his father did. More likely, the opposite would be true.

There was nothing doll-like about Dolly Quinn. Beneath her lovely face was a mind as cold and calculating as her father’s.

Otho Gilliam never laughed. He thought he was a hard man, but not everyone agreed.

Mrs. Gilliam had been a beautiful woman when her husband brought her to his ranch, but what she’d seen and learned left her tired, bitter, and silent—she didn’t like what her husband did but felt powerless to stop it.

Sheriff Frank Sommers didn’t like trouble—so he was careful to be somewhere else when it broke out.

Paddy Eckert knew what really happened on the day Connell’s father died—but it might be a secret he would carry to his grave.