DEAD MAN RIDING

In this Eastwoodish western, no one in that troubled part of Texas had ever heard of anyone named Fanton, but that was the name prodigal brother Hawk Spradlin whispered just before he pulled his gun on a quiet, grim stranger and got himself killed.

It happened one evening just before dark in Hoot Spradlin's dugout store and saloon. The skinflint rancher was saving his coal oil until full darkness forced him to light a lamp, and he could not see the stranger clearly. But he got the drop on the tall man from behind with his shotgun, disarmed him and with the help of his lawless riders he hung Fanton to a cottonwood tree and left him hanging there that dark stormy night.

The next morning the noose hung empty from the cottonwood limb. The man they had hung was gone. Hoot Spradlin ordered his men to hunt Fanton down and kill him. They didn't know whether they were hunting a real man or a ghost. But one thing was certain �" he could ride and shoot like the devil.

WARNING: Reading a Van Holt western may make you want to get on
a horse and hunt some bad guys down in the Old West. Of course, the easiest and most enjoyable way to do it is vicariously -- by reading another Van Holt western.

Van Holt writes westerns the way they were meant to be written.

More action-packed gunfighting westerns by Van Holt: