Marshal of Sundown

When Jim Torrance, riding up from the South, crested the live-oak-studded knoll from which he saw the rip-roaring little town of Sundown for the first time, the place looked as...

Lying Bill Yarbo, the next day, told one of the most intriguing lies of his Munchausenesque career, in that it was one which later seemed to be borne out in fact. All this was m...

Steve Bordereau was a showman of sorts; else he’d never have made the Stag Horn so widely publicized across hundreds of Southwestern miles. He knew values and how to emphasize t...

The following day had Sam Pepper running around in circles. Pop Smith, down at the General Store, said, “Sam reminds me of a dog chasin’ his own tail.” Hank Webber, the stage dr...

“Where are you taking me?” was the first thing she said. Then, ashamed that she should always be thinking of herself, she added hurriedly: “But you! What about your ranch? Your...

Torrance brought in a saddle blanket which he fastened snugly over their window and then with splinters of wood from floor and walls he made a tiny fire on the rock hearth, pure...

Jim Torrance was tempted up to the yielding point when he came to that spot on the mountain flank where a fresh track led deep into the dark ravine. For this far Clark Murdo had...

Early though the hour was, the Stag Horn was crowded. Excitement had run high in Sundown, and men clustered here where the current chain of events had seemed to have its incepti...

Jim Torrance came stalking back into the Stag Horn. He had been away so short a time that he found things here pretty much as he had left them. Sally Dawn Cannon stood where he...

They had made their packs--blankets, bacon and beans, coffee, frying pan and coffeepot--and headed up into the mountains, riding the same trails Torrance and Sally Dawn had so r...

Three men lay sprawled in the house from which Bordereau had fled so precipitately, all three looking to be dead. In fact one of them was beyond ever stirring again; that one ch...

Whoever it was trying to get in at the rear door suddenly desisted; Sam Pepper had gone to infinite pains to make sure that all doors were barred, all windows fastened. There wa...

“Gone,” was all that any one of them could say of Jim Torrance, and “Gone” was all that they were to know of him for many a day. Speculation was rife: He had met up with Bordere...

Jim Torrance lay flat on his back in bed--and he didn’t know in what bed or in what house--and he didn’t even know that he was in any bed at all. He opened his eyes and looked a...

She laughed at him and wrinkled up her nose in the way she had, and he grinned at her and, for about two minutes, the world was a mighty nice place to live in. Then he started f...

The third letter reached Sheriff Walt Evans four days later. He found it, like the two others, stuck under his door. He brought it straightway to Jim Torrance, whom he found, ea...

As Sheriff Evans and Banker Hasbrook rode down trail and around the bend, Evans slipped a hand under his coat, dragged out two hefty forty-fours and slid them into Hasbrook’s ea...

Jim Torrance didn’t stop in the barroom downstairs; he looked in at the door, saw that Murdo wasn’t there, and went on upstairs. On his way he was thinking: “I came to Sundown f...

And days passed, as days have a way of doing. That fine old trio from Canyon City, Evans and Hasbrook and Kibbee, had returned home well content after seeing the sign nailed to...

Torrance hit the high spots streaking over to the King Cannon Ranch. But he got only about half way, to the top of that pine-and-oak studded knoll where some day the home was to...

Florinda, though as nervous as a cat and all hot impatience, awaited her chance to slip out of the Stag Horn gambling room without drawing any curious attention to herself. She...

Jim Torrance dabbed at his eyes as he ran, and cursed under his breath and longed with all his heart for just one thing then--to come up with Steve Bordereau. Perhaps because hi...

Men stood around and watched the outbuildings burn to the ground. There was nothing they could do beyond making sure that the fires did not spread, an unlikely thing at this tim...