Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch (3)

For years, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have ridden roughshod over rabble-rousers and gun hands in troubled towns like Appaloosa, Resolution, and Brimstone. Now, newly appointed as Territorial Marshalls, they find themselves traveling by train through the Indian Territories. Their first marshaling duty starts out as a simple mission to escort Mexican prisoners to the border, but when the Governor of Texas, his wife and daughters climb aboard with their bodyguards and $500,000 in tow, their journey suddenly becomes a lot more complicated.

The problem is Bloody Bob Brandice. He and Virgil have had it out before, an encounter that left Brandice face-down in the street with two .44 slugs lodged in him. Now, twelve years later on a night train struggling uphill in a thunderstorm, Brandice is back — and he’s not alone. Cole and Hitch find themselves in the midst of a heist with a horde of very bad men, two beautiful young hostages, and a man with a vendetta he’s determined to carry out.

Appaloosa, the hometown of Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, continues to prosper, but with prosperity comes a slew of new trouble: carpetbaggers, gamblers, migrants, peddlers, drifters, thieves, and whores, all boiling in a cauldron of excess and greed. And there’s a new menace in town: a wealthy, handsome easterner — and the owner of Appaloosa’s new casino — Boston Bill Black. Boston Bill is flashy and bigger than life. He’s a prankster and a notorious womanizer, and with eight notches on the handle of his Colt, he’s rumored quick on the draw. When he finds himself wanted for a series of murders, he quickly vanishes. Cole and Hitch locate and arrest him, but Boston Bill escapes once again. Another murder sets the duo on his trail, eventually taking them back to Appaloosa — where one woman in particular may — or may not — prove to be the apple of Boston Bill’s eye.

Territorial marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch figured things had finally settled down in Appaloosa when Boston Bill Black’s murder charge was dropped. But all that changed when Augustus Noble Driggs was transferred to a stateside penitentiary just across the border from Mexico. Square-jawed, handsome, and built like a muscled thoroughbred stallion, Driggs manages to intimidate everyone inside the prison walls, including the upstart young warden. In a haunting twist of fate, Driggs and a pack of cold-blooded convicts are suddenly on the loose — and it’s up to any and all territorial lawmen, including Cole and Hitch, to capture the fugitives and rescue the woman kidnapped during their escape. But nothing is ever quite what it seems with the ever-elusive Driggs. Finally free, he’s quickly on his own furious hunt for a hidden cache of gold and jewels — and for the men who betrayed him and left him for dead. With an unlikely and unconventional Yankee detective by their side, Cole and Hitch set off on a massive manhunt. As horses’ hooves thunder and guns echo deadening reports, Driggs discovers one of the lawmen on his trail is none other than a fellow West Point graduate he’d just as soon see dead. Ruthless and willing to leave a bloody path of destruction in his wake, Driggs seeks vengeance at any cost.