The Man from Dakota — Peter Brandvold

BULLETS FLY HIGH IN THE NEVERSUMMER MOUNTAINS.Anders Nordic and his loyal collie, Finn, are holed up in a remote line shack in Colorado's rugged Neversummer Mountains, doing what they do best-living alone and staying alive. Hired by rancher Garth Deveraux to deal with rustlers, Nordic's been picking them off like ducks on a mill pond. It's a job that earns him enemies fast, and keeping settlers off the range is part of the deal.When a farming family from Nordic's home territory of Dakota-strangers to these parts-arrives with a pregnant daughter, Nordic faces a brutal choice: turn them away or risk the wrath of his employer, Garth Deveraux, and the sadistic foreman, Wayne Bitterman. Nordic has to choose: protect the innocent, or follow orders.Deveraux's daughter returns from her East Coast schooling-and promptly falls for Nordic. Their forbidden romance only adds fuel to the fire.Then murder strikes. The pioneer family is wiped out-except for the young mother and her newborn, now under Nordic's reluctant protection. As tensions rise and bullets fly across the high-country range, Nordic finds himself in the center of a violent cattle war, hunted by men on both sides.The mountain winds howl. The rifles crack. But the man from Dakota doesn't flinch.