Phil Dunlap

After he discovers an empty army prison wagon and some dead bodies just outside of Cochise, US Marshall Piedmont Kelly is even more surprised to find out Sheriff John Henry Stevens has been kidnapped. While Kelly deals with the confusion that has erupted in town, his Apache partner, Spotted Dog, tracks the escaped prisoners through the scorching desert of the Arizona Territory. As if a missing top lawman in town wasn’t bad enough, Cochise’s craven mayor has sworn in a total stranger as the new deputy sheriff. Carter Standish is a fast-talking braggart whose epic tales of heroism immediately arouse suspicion. Kelly doesn’t trust him, and when he discovers that the local bank is about to become the temporary repository for a hundred thousand dollars in payroll, he starts to have even more reservations about this newcomer. But with Kelly and Spotted Dog working a one-two punch, they’ve set out to foil the bank plot, get the prisoners back on the road to the justice they deserve, and smoke out Standish’s true intentions.

US Marshal Piedmont Kelly shackles a stranger to a tree for the night after the man rides into his camp and tries to kill him. When dawn arrives, Kelly finds the man murdered in his sleep. Confused and worried, the marshal sets out to back track the man in hopes of catching his killer. Along the way, he comes across a wounded Chiricahua Apache who has been shot during an attempted massacre of several of his people. After patching the Indian’s wounds, the marshal finds that the Indian is a suspect in the robbery of a stagecoach and the killing of a driver, guard, and passengers. Feeling strongly that the Indian is innocent, the marshal discovers that the man murdered in his camp holds the key to a highly unlikely band of killers. Phil Dunlap delivers another fast-paced, action-packed western.