A Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist 2020

The West is a Lawless Place

Arizona Territory- 1889

Billy Bob Clyde sets off West after receiving a cryptic message from his long-lost father. Although Clyde thinks Pa found the California gold he went searching for years ago, he also suspects Pa is in danger, and he’s determined to help.

But Clyde’s journey is waylaid in the ghost town of Cactus Poke when he gets arrested as a suspect in a recent robbery—the town’s claim to fame, a solid gold nugget known as the Goldwater Potato, has gone missing, and they think Clyde took it! Desperate to prove his innocence and get on to California, Clyde strikes a bargain for his freedom with the town’s crazy one-legged sheriff—if Clyde can recover the stolen Tater and track down the real thief, the notorious Outlaw Jack, the sheriff will let him go. Assisted by Sadie, a fearless young gunslinger with more than one trick up her sleeve, Clyde embarks on a mission to hunt down the gold nugget and clear his name.

But all is not as it seems in Cactus Poke...

Once an Outlaw, Always an Outlaw

Southwest Colorado - 1890

One year after the oil discovery that turned it from ghost town to boom town, Cactus Poke is thriving. When the owner of the Silverstone Mining Company in Colorado proposes a business deal that would bring the railroad line to Cactus Poke, Pa eagerly accepts. Accompanied by Sadie and Clyde, he sets out on a trip to Colorado to sign the deal that will usher Cactus Poke into the next century.

But the mission quickly derails when their stagecoach is held up by a posse who take Pa for an outlaw, leaving Sadie and Clyde stranded in the Rocky Mountains. Determined to set the misunderstanding to rights, Sadie and Clyde make their way to the small mining town of Silverstone. But when they get there, the sheriff doesn’t know anything about the group of supposed lawmen who took Pa—and worse, the Silverstone Mining Company claims never to have sent the letter that started all this in the first place. When Clyde starts investigating, he discovers that he and Sadie—along with new friends and old enemies—are caught in the middle of a tangled web of outlaws, buried treasure, decades-old grudges, betrayal, and revenge.

And worst of all, the key to finding Pa and bringing a merciless band of outlaws to justice rests in the hands of a man only the truly desperate would risk trusting . . .