The John Gunn Chronicles, # 3
Carnage in Rattlesnake Cañon
Out on the frontier, the law was only ever as honest as the man wearing the badge. And in the summer of 1867, the New Mexico Territory was rotten clear to the bone.
For six years, treaty goods meant for the starving pueblos had been quietly funneled into the back rooms of Santa Fé merchants. Crooked agents grew fat. Soldiers died chasing hungry Indians who jumped the reservation just to eat. Everyone in town knew. Nobody did a thing.
Then a stranger pinned on a federal star.
John David Gunn is twenty something, soft spoken until he isn't, and exactly the wrong man to underestimate. In his first hours as acting Chief Marshal, he empties half the city's stores into his jail and serves the guilty cold beans and weak coffee at what he calls the Hotel Federal Law. But corruption is only the opening hand. A bank robbery turns bloody, a banker's throat is cut, and the trail leads Gunn toward a brilliant, ruthless gang and the educated woman who runs them, the only soul alive who knows how to walk into the snake pit and walk back out.
Their hideout is a hidden bowl in the rocks the locals call Rattlesnake Cañon. They think the serpents make it safe.
They have not met John Gunn.
Spanning July 1867 to February 1868, Carnage in Rattlesnake Cañon is forty days of hard trail, sharp dialogue, and frontier justice delivered the only way it ever truly was: up close, and without apology. Fans of Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Larry McMurtry, and Cormac McCarthy will find a hero who is equal parts lawman, trickster, and reckoning.
The crooked had six years to run.
They should have run faster.
