E Jefferson Clay Knihy

Crossing the Red Man River when it was in full flood wasn't the wisest thing gambler Duke Benedict and his cowboy sidekick Hank Brazos had ever done. And when the ferry they riding tore free of its ropes, they found themselves driven downstream until their wild ride ended on the banks of Peaceful Valley. Here, a religious order had built itself a town … but the Devil had settled in those parts, too, for one of the townsfolk had just been murdered, and the two newcomers quickly found themselves accused of the killing! As if that wasn't bad enough, Peaceful Valley was about to get a visit from bad man Chad Irons and his gang of cutthroats. Before he'd been sent to prison, the valley had been Irons' hideaway. Now he intended to take it back - and kill everyone who stood in his way! One way or another, it was time for Benedict and Brazos to start fighting back …

There was trouble in Fortitude Valley. Someone had set up a lumber camp smack in the middle of cattle country. And to make matters worse, the lumbermen drafted in to work the axes and saws, and float the timber down to the sawmill, were paroled convicts! If they made a go of the chance they'd been given, they could win their freedom. But the Fortitude Valley Cattlemen's Association had other ideas about that. Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict were hired to keep the peace between the two opposing factions, but that was easier said than done. Unwittingly, they landed themselves right in the middle of an all-out war in which neither side intended to go down without a fight… and their weapons ranged from red-hot lead to sweaty, unstable dynamite!

After witnessing the cold-blooded killing of a man named Boyd Larsen, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos found themselves up to their gunbelts in mystery, murder and mayhem. Someone was rustling cattle from Nate Kendrick's Rancho Antigua, and while that in itself wasn't Benedict and Brazos' business, rumor had it that the man doing all the rustling was Bo Rangle, the cut-throat outlaw they've been tracking ever since he massacred their men in the closing days of the Civil War. Signing on as range detective and wrangler respectively, Benedict and Brazos set out to run the rustlers to ground and exact their revenge on Rangle. But before they can find the man, they need to find the cattle... and somehow or other, those cattle have vanished right off the face of the earth!

They were an odd pair, the one-time Union captain and the former Confederate sergeant. They'd fought each other during the Battle of Pea Ridge … and then ended up fighting shoulder to shoulder when a common enemy showed his face.Bo Rangle, leader of the guerilla force known as Rangle's Raiders, took advantage of the slaughter to steal what the two opposing forces had been fighting for - two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Confederate gold. Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict never forgot that day, or each other. And when, by chance, their trails crossed again after the War, they decided to team up, find Rangle and reclaim that gold for themselves. And while they were at it, they swore to get revenge for all of their comrades who'd died that day back in 1862 …