Skull Mesa: A Western Story - Hardcover

Overholser, Wayne D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1432828517 ISBN 13: 9781432828516

Publisher: Five Star, 2014

Synopsis

Clay Roland, marshal of Paiute City, was on the street when the young stranger rode into town. Clay's experience as a lawman told him that a stranger might mean trouble for him. He was in the open -- his badge was visible. However, the stranger ignored him, riding to the livery stable and putting up his horse.

The stranger's next stop was Kelly's Bar. Clay went over to the livery to ask if the stranger had stated his business. He had. He was looking for Marshal Clay Roland. Then two shots were heard from Kelly's Bar, and the stranger was dead.

Clay learns the stranger had a letter for him, now in the hands of the man who shot the stranger, Blacky Doane. Clay confronts Doane. Clay gets the letter and Doane leaves town. The letter is from a lawyer in Painted Rock, a distant town in the shadow of Skull Mesa. Clay's father has died, leaving him the Bar C Ranch.

But there is trouble at Skull Mesa, and Clay should keep his arrival a secret. The letter poses questions to which Clay has no answers, and there is only one thing to do.

About this title

About the Author:

Wayne D. Overholser won three Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and has a long list of fine Western titles to his

credit. Buckaroo's Code was his first Western novel and remains one of his best. Overholser's Western novels are based on a solid

knowledge of the history and customs of the 19th-Century West, particularly when set in his two favorite Western states, Oregon and

Colorado. Almost invariably, his stories weave a spell of their own with their scenes and images of social and economic forces often in

conflict and the diverse ways of life and personalities that made the American Western frontier so unique a time and place in human

history.

From Booklist:

A kid is gunned down because of a letter he brings to Sheriff Clay Roland, but Clay finds the letter and heads home after an absence of six years. Clay left Skull Mesa estranged from his father and rejected by his fickle girlfriend, but he has learned a great deal, most of all how to face adversity. He has inherited the family ranch following his father’s death, but a wheelchair-bound madwoman, Queen Bess, has gobbled up every ranch but Clay’s, and she has vowed to kill him if he tries to claim what’s his. What’s more, Clay deduces, Bess had his father killed. But Clay has allies in the desert country below the mesa: an outlaw friend and a beautiful young woman, Ardis Kline. Clay had remembered Ardis as a scrawny kid and is slow to realize that she’s in love with him. She can handle a gun, and she’s not fickle. A weary gunman on Bess’ payroll, Abe Lavine, provides still more surprises as Clay and Ardis mount their defense and then their offense. A showdown ensues in this predictable, though likable, story from old pro Overholser, who died in 1996. --John Mort

About this edition

• Publisher: Five Star
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1432828517
• ISBN 13: 9781432828516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182