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When the rustlers hit the J-Star ranch, they wounded one of Jim Allison’s men and drove off twenty head of cattle. Jim and Tom Jessup got four of them. After they got the wounded 1-28-2013 3;05;28 PMman situated and the doctor to look at him, they were to head out after the rustlers to recover their cattle.

Before that happened, the local sheriff stopped by with a stranger and a deal. Stewart Halliday owned a breeding ranch down in Mexico that his daughter was managing. A revolutionary was stirring up trouble and he wanted his daughter and twenty Arabian stallions, worth a small fortune, brought up to the States before the man could get his army at them.

Jim was offered a hefty fee. It was a hundred miles to the ranch across the border, all of it desert, and a hundred miles of the same to get to the border.

It didn’t take the two men long to catch and deal with the rustlers. Jim sent Tom back with the cattle and now he was alone.

Jim just gets out of the ranch in time. Word came that the revolutionaries had hit a large ranch just fifty miles away, killed everyone, looted and burned the buildings.

And they were on their way there.

Jim is in charge of the twenty stallions, the owner’s rebellious daughter, and a pair of greenhorns, an engineer and his wife. All he had to protect them was six vaqueros and a box of dynamite.

Two hundred miles of desert, an army of men chasing them, and the final showdown is to be in a place called Thunder Gorge, a place with a bad reputation.

Liked this one.

Ben Bridges is one of the many pseudonyms of David Whitehead. He’s also one of the driving forces behind PICCADILLY PUBLISHING which is bringing back adventure fiction, both western and others I believe, from the seventies. His website is HERE.

I believe Evan Lewis is doing the collecting this Friday for Forgotten Books. His very excellent blog is DAVY CROCKETT’S ALMANACK OF MYSTERY, ADVENTURE, AND THE WILD WEST.