The Dark Wind Howis Over Mary — Fay Risner

Try this first in the Stringbean Hooper Series. Sheriff Stringbean Hooper's description for the sheriff's job of Sully Town, Montana is relaxing with is feet on the his desk while he watches the town's citizens ride by. All that changes when the town's doctor's wife disappears. Hooper finds himself in a murder investigation, bushwhacked, threatened and in the middle of a family feud between cattle baron Mac Sullivan, the missing woman's father and his son-in-law, Doctor Strummer, the missing woman's husband. Hooper's only help is a nervous deputy/pig farmer, Whiskers Parker, and the gun toting woman owner of Rocking T ranch, Theodosia Sheffield. Hooper doesn't much care for a woman helping him fight his gun battles. Especially this one. She is set on marrying Stringbean if she can catch him. So he finds himself fighting for his life and his bachelorhood while he solves the mysterious disappearance of Mary Alice Strummer.