Grant holds his new bride’s body close. All are dead from the stagecoach robbery – except him. The gambler vows he will find the large man riding the strawberry roan, and his masked cohorts, and the devils in Hell would pity those men.
Setting up his table in a saloon, he forms a friendship with the owner Francie, bar girl Sadie, and two young savvy orphan girls living alone in a dugout. Closely he watches the men who come to quench their thirst and play a hand of honest poker. Then beautiful Laura Blanding enters his life. Intrigue, betrayal, cattle rustling and more murders create the backdrop of an even deeper mystery. The day of reckoning comes and the entire town is stunned.
A Compelling Mystery in the1890s Arizona Strip.
From the Publisher
In what we speak of as the ‘Olden Days’, the strip of land between the Utah line and the southern part of the Arizona Territory harbored only wild animals and Indians. Few early explorers dared to cross this land because of the lack of water. Going to the north, through Utah, rivers and streams were found often enough that travelers could reach their destination without choking to death. Not so on the Arizona Strip. Here water could not be found within almost a week of travel.
In addition to the lack of water, those folks traveling from south to north encountered the large canyon, later to be named THE GRAND CANYON, which effectively blocked their path. Crossing the wild Colorado River could be accomplished at Lee’s Ferry to the east of the Strip and Pearce Ferry to the west of the Strip. Hardship became the constant companion of those traveling this area. Only the Paiutes and the Navajo Indians seemed capable of traversing this vast land.
Before the white man came, grass grew to the belly of a horse, but when a few hardy white men established a fort at Pipe Springs in the 1860's, cattle were brought to the land and after a few years, because of overgrazing, the grass became shorter and the number of cattle capable of being fed on it were reduced. By the early 1900's only a few thousand cows could be ranged on the land.
When Teddy Roosevelt became president of the U. S., he liked to travel to the Kaibab mountain, also known as the Buckskin, to hunt at the east end of the Strip. Hunting parties traversed the land by carrying enough water to sustain them till they reached the small ponds found on the mountain. His infatuation with the Grand Canyon at the south end of the Buckskin drew him back many times, and later, enterprising young men established a visitor’s lookout on the north rim of the canyon. With the advent of the automobile, other travelers began to leave their footprints on the Arizona Strip.
The honeymoon trail, established by those young couples seeking to be married in the St George temple across the Utah line, brought many more to the area. A few small towns began to spring up, providing water and shelter to those passing through. Logging of the forests at Mt. Trumbull and the Kaibab resulted in more white settlers and by the mid 1950's, organized law finally arrived.
No more did the land harbor only wild animals and Indians. So-called civilization encroached. Water wells were dug, reservoirs were built to catch rain water for live stock, and roads traversed the land bringing more and more tourists to the area. However. to those who remember the time before this encroachment, the Strip is still a sacred place. Not much has really changed. Yes, more folks live here now, but once out of the small towns, the land is the same as it has been for thousands of years.
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