Big Prize — George G. Gilman

Mesa, Colorado, was a nice town. Settled, growing, thriving. God-fearing on a Sunday, money-making of a weekday, the citizens grew carefully richer, and their life had a pattern to it.A pattern that Adam Steele didn’t fit. Not when he rode in, sweaty and shabby after too long on the trail, leading a gelding with two dead men lashed across the saddle.Mesa, Colorado, drew back, squeamish and shocked at the blood dried black round the gunshot wounds, at the flies and the smell.Until the news got around that there was a fortune buried somewhere out there in the hills. And only one man had the map of its location. Then the niceness and the manners were stripped away to the bare bones of greed and hatred. And the citizens remembered how to kill.