The Gun Fight
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
John Benton was one of the toughest men ever to wear a Texas Ranger badge. But eight years ago, in August 1871, he hung up his guns for good.
Or so he hoped.
Then young Robby Coles challenged him to a fight over some imagined slight to the boy's sixteen-year-old girlfriend. At first Benton tried to laugh off the affair. Why, the boy was little more than a child. But rumors and gossip spread like wildfire through their dusty frontier town and soon enough the entire community seems to be goading both men towards a fatal confrontation neither one truly wants.
Benton doesn't want to kill again. Robby is secretly terrified of facing the legendary gunfighter. Yet, with both men's honor on the line, is there any way to avoid a duel to the death?
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the prologue to this page-turning new novel by the author of Journal of the Gun Years , aging Texas Ranger John Benton hangs up his guns after killing a bank robber who's barely more than a child. Eight years later, in 1879, Benton has settled down as a rancher outside the town of Kellville, whose inhabitants treat him as a popular hero, a symbol of the romantic, vanishing frontier. This hero-worship turns ugly after an adolescent girl tells her fiance, Robby Coles, of her daydreams about the former lawman. Mistaking fantasy for reality, Coles attacks Benton, precipitating the events that lead to the disastrous climax implied in the title. Rumors of an affair between Benton and the girl circulate, becoming more inflated with each telling. Goaded by an imperious and manipulative father, Coles continues to challenge Benton, shattering the peace of the town and the lives of its inhabitants. Matheson tells his story in taut, cinematic style, and his characters speak in twangy period argot without sounding forced or phony. This is an absorbing parable about the terrible effects of gossip and the tragedy of a peaceable man driven to violence. ( Apr. )
