Final Showdown at High Noon (Preview)

Chapter One

Whang! Whang! Ka-bang! It was an annoying, repetitive drumbeat, but he didn’t see a parade. Then, he heard a loud, rasping voice: “Hey, you! Barber! Wake up!”

Tom sat up, suddenly awake. He hadn’t been dreaming. Somebody banging on his door in the middle of the night meant a medical emergency. He fought the covers to swing his legs off the bed, the cold floor under his feet jarring him further awake. The banging and shouting continued as he groped for his pants and pulled them on in the gloom. The only light came from the coals he had banked in the grate the night before.

“Okay, okay,” Tom mumbled as he lit a candle from the coals. He took a few seconds to pull the socks he had dropped beside the bed back on his cold feet. “I’m no help to you if I get pneumonia.” As he tromped down the stairs, he added, “Hold your horses! I’m coming!”

He opened the door to see a man, a big guy, holding up another semi-conscious one with his other fist raised to batter the door again. Tom ignored the mouthy one and moved the candle toward the slumping one. His harsh breathing and the blood covering the left side of his shirt showed his need for immediate medical attention.

“My brother’s hurt bad,” said the big man. “You gotta fix him up.”

Tom looked at the speaker for the first time and saw the man he least wanted to see: Stephen McKenna, the most wanted criminal in Arizona Territory, according to the posters.

Tom recovered quickly. He didn’t ask questions; he didn’t know how the man came to be injured.

“Pick him up,” he ordered, “and follow me.”

He pushed the door wide open to make the burdened man’s entry easier and led him through the barber shop to a rear door. Once in the medical room, he lit a kerosene lamp.

McKenna followed him with a stream of incoherent speech peppered with sobs. “My brother Dickie. The only person in the world I love. You gotta save him. You’re the barber.”

“But I’m not a doctor.” Tom pointed to a gurney. “Put him there.”

He watched Stephen lay his brother on the table with a gentility that belied his barbarous speech. Tom looked down at Dickie, a good-looking red-headed kid.

“But barbers take the place of doctors.”

“Only in towns too small to afford a real doctor, like Yellowback. Step aside, please.”

He slipped between the hulking criminal and the patient, picked up a pair of scissors, and started cutting away the man’s shirt. Dickie had been shot, but he wouldn’t ask for details. He didn’t want to know; he just wanted them out of there. He exposed the bullet hole in Dickie’s chest, listened to the young man’s labored, burbling breathing, and felt his irregular pulse.

“A pneumothorax.”

“A new what?” Stephen demanded, almost in Tom’s ear. Tom hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud.

“A collapsed lung. Now please, step back.”

Dickie had been injured several hours before. Tom wasn’t sure he could save him. He opened a cabinet, withdrew a chest tube, and used it to pierce the patient’s chest.

“Hey, what the hell you doin’? You just poked another hole in him. He don’t need—”

As Stephen reached for the chest tube, Tom batted his hand away.

“I’m saving his life. The bullet allowed air in between the chest wall and the lung, which caused the lung to collapse. I’m letting the air out so the lung can reinflate.”

Stephen began pacing back and forth, his eyes wide and glaring, raging madly. “Dad hated Dickie, said he killed our mother. Mom died while Dickie was gittin’ borned. When I got big enough, I told Pa I’d kill him if he ever beat Dickie again, then we lit out. I studied on killin’ Pa but he drunk hisself to death before I could git back.”

Then Stephen abruptly stopped raving. “Oh, shit. I forgot about the horses. I gotta tie ’em to the hitchrail.”

He started for the door but turned back. He pulled Tom away from Dickie and grasped him by the front of his nightshirt. In his fight to save Dickie’s life, Tom had forgotten the danger Stephen posed.

With his face close to Tom’s, red-rimmed eyes glaring madly, he snarled, “Dickie’d better be able to ride when I git back.”

Tom shuddered as Stephen went out. Dickie wouldn’t ride for some time. If he even survived.

Shaking, he turned back to his patient. Before even feeling for Dickie’s pulse, he knew the man would never ride again. He withdrew the chest tube and stood unmoving beside the gurney until he heard Stephen’s boots stomp and spurs jangle across the barber shop floor. He turned resolutely to face Stephen when he came through the door.

“How is he, Doc?” the man boomed. “We gotta git outta this little shithole of a town.” His big frame quivered with tension; his smile bore no humor.

Tom almost said, “I’m not a doctor,” but realized that would only postpone what may be, for him, a fatal confrontation.

“I’m afraid Dickie didn’t make it.”

“What the hell you talkin’ ’bout? Didn’t make what?” Stephen rushed to Dickie’s side, grasped him by the shoulders, and shook him. “Hey, little brother, it’s time to ride. They got the rest of the gang but we’ll build us another’n. Git better gunslingers this time.”

He shook Dickie again and slapped his cheek. Finally, he turned to Tom.

“Y’ killt him, y’ little bastard.”

At six feet tall, Tom hardly felt “little,” and years of farm work before becoming a barber had left him fit, but he faced a madman a half-head taller with a more muscular build.

Tom shrugged. “I did my best. He’d been shot so many hours before, I don’t think even a real doctor could’ve—”

Stephen held Tom by the throat before he knew what had happened. Tom saw the wild, glaring eyes and felt fetid breath on his face. He couldn’t breathe.

In Tom’s fevered imagination, the fist Stephen drew back looked as big as a ham.

Chapter Two

Panic enabled Tom to almost dodge Stephen’s massive fist, and it glanced off his cheek instead of solidly striking his nose. Tom fell backward, out of Stephen’s grasp, fighting for air. Stumbling against the wall kept him from hitting the ground. Bellowing incoherently, Stephen charged him. Tom raised the chest tube he still held and, ignoring the ringing in his head, he thrust it into Stephen’s throat. Stephen backed away, gagging and choking.

At least that stopped his hollering, thought Tom. While Stephen floundered around, Tom rammed a fist into his stomach as hard as he could. Stephen hardly budged, and Tom shook his hand rapidly, hoping he hadn’t broken it.

Stephen coughed a little from Tom’s poke in his throat, then grinned triumphantly. “You done it now, little barber man. I’m gonna enjoy this.” He leaned forward, his arms spread apart, then charged Tom faster than Tom thought possible for a man that big.

Tom raced toward the gurney. Finally remembering his revolvers, Stephen stopped to draw one, which gave Tom time to round the gurney. With the strength gained by desperation, Tom upended the gurney to dump it and Dickie’s body onto Stephen. From the floor, Stephen lay nonplussed, the gurney on his lap and Dickey’s dead eyes staring at him. While he remained unmoving, Tom ran to the fireplace and grabbed the poker.

Stephen, reanimated by Tom’s motion, looked around desperately for the Colt the gurney had knocked from his hand. He gave up and pulled its mate in his other holster, firing just as Tom brought the poker down on his gun hand.

The bullet went awry. Tom ignored the sound of broken glass as he brought the poker down with both hands on Stephen’s head. In case the poker hadn’t done its job, Tom dropped to his knees and twisted the revolver out of Stephen’s hand. He looked around to see where the bullet had gone, seeing that Stephen would remain immobile for a while. There was a hole in the glass over his framed barber school certificate.

Tom wondered what to do next. He would be within his rights to shoot Stephen. No one who saw the room’s damage could deny Tom’s claim of self-defense, not to mention the community’s relief at Stephen McKenna’s death. But Tom had never killed anyone, and he wouldn’t start then.

He couldn’t ask these innocent farmers and tradespeople to apprehend a deadly killer like Stephen. Barely a hundred people lived in Yellowback, and they didn’t even have a town marshal. So, he had to flee. And before Stephen recovered. He would go to Hastings, the county seat of Hermosa County, and tell the sheriff. Apprehending a big-name killer like Stephen should ensure his success in the next election.

Tom kept his medical bag filled with sterilized equipment and basic medicines for emergency visits to out-of-town patients. He stuffed that into a saddle bag he kept in the medical room before he raced upstairs and put on his boots, a proper shirt, hat, and coat.

He put his old Smith & Wesson Model 3 and all the money he had in his bedside table drawer in his pockets, then ran back downstairs and into the medical room. To protect himself and the townspeople after Stephen regained consciousness, he threw Stephen and Dickie’s gun belts, with their revolvers and holsters, in a saddle bag.

Outside, shivering in the chill air, he saw a way to delay Stephen’s pursuit. He untied the reins of his and Dickie’s horses from the hitchrail and led them down the main street to the livery stable. Before entering it, he removed the rifle scabbards with their weapons from their saddles and leaned them against the barn wall. Eddie, the livery night guard, would have enough questions concerning the two saddled horses without wondering where Tom had gotten all the firepower. If Eddie was even awake.

Inside, as Tom expected, he saw Eddie asleep on a pile of hay near the front door. Tom soon emerged from the stable on his docile bay mare Nellie. He hadn’t taken the time to rub down the other two horses, though he felt guilty for his negligence. Leaving town to save his skin trumped caring for the poor equines. He had left one of the Winchesters and the holstered Colts in a back corner of the haymow and attached another rifle and scabbard to his saddle. Nellie carried enough weight without them, and McKenna would hardly think to look for them there.

He smiled to think of Eddie’s astonishment at seeing two strange saddled mounts and Tom’s missing mare. He or Horace, the stable’s owner, would find out who they belonged to soon enough after Stephen had regained consciousness and came looking for his horse.

As a precaution, Tom took a street a block distant and parallel to his shop’s street. No sense in letting McKenna see which way he left town in case he had revived.

Stephen had indeed awakened. Tom heard him shouting, probably from in front of his shop.

“Hey, barber! Tom Bradley! I know your name from the barber’s diploma on your wall. I’m gonna put a hole in you just like I put through that paper. Just like you killt my brother. The onliest person I ever loved and who ever loved me.”

A series of sobs interrupted his rant until he regained his voice and continued his diatribe, but Tom had stopped listening. He urged Nellie to a canter and then a trot. He wanted to put as much road between himself and Yellowback as soon as possible. He could hear Stephen’s mad cries for a long time after he could no longer make out the words.

He turned his collar up against the chill east wind.

Chapter Three

It would take Stephen a while to find his horse. On top of that, he had no gun, and most importantly, he didn’t know which way Tom had gone. That gave Tom anywhere from a few hours to a few days of grace. It did little to comfort him, though, especially with the cold wind freezing every uncovered bit of his flesh. He allowed Nellie to canter for the first few miles to widen the distance between him and the town, but then he decided, since the gibbous moon and stars provided sufficient light, to cut across the desert if Stephen chose that road to follow him.

Nellie kicked her way through the manzanita ground cover. Even on a bright night like this, off-road could prove dangerous, so he allowed her to walk along rock or hard-packed earth whenever possible to hide their trail and avoid patches of snow left from the latest storm. He guided Nellie into a narrow draw to escape the dismal wind, but soon abandoned it. Its floor’s loose sand would betray hoofprints to the most amateur tracker.

The night’s earlier terror had kept Tom awake at first, but as the adrenaline dissipated, he caught himself dozing off, a dangerous habit while plodding through the desert in the middle of the night. Occasionally, a misstep by Nellie shook him awake when he hadn’t known he’d been sleeping.

Falling jarred him awake. He hit the ground palms first and slid through abrasive sand on his stomach, but his head striking a mesquite tree stopped him. His aching head and neck made rolling over to check on Nellie agonizing. He saw her struggling to rise. He had landed far enough away that she hadn’t fallen on him.

By the time he reached her, she had made it to her feet. He stumbled over the dislodged rock that toppled her, then rubbed her nose. He checked her fetlocks as well as he could in the dark. Nothing seemed broken, but she favored her left front foot.

“That’s enough for tonight, girl,” he told Nellie. “It’s too dangerous to blunder around in the dark.”

He found a rock outcropping to shield them from the wind and protected a little dry grass for her to crop. Then he realized he hadn’t thought to bring food for himself or Nellie. His emergency medical kit included a canteen full of water, but Nellie would need a drink soon. As penance for his negligence, he decided not to have any water until he found some for Nellie. He took off her saddle and other accoutrements but had no way to rub her down.

Then he lay down, using his saddle as a pillow., wondering why in the hell he hadn’t brought his bedroll. Wrapped in his coat and gloom, he fell into a fitful sleep.

~ ~ ~

A glimmer of pre-dawn light awakened him. He sat up with a groan; so many things hurt. His hands were scraped raw by the sand he had slid through when he fell off Nellie, and his head and neck still ached. He felt the bruise on one side of his face and stretched his sore back. His body felt like some evil giant cook had run her rolling pin over it.

Then he noticed that the sun would rise over the wrong horizon. “Oh, shit!” he told Nellie. “We’re going in the wrong direction!”

They had taken the north road out of town, the one that led to Hastings, the county seat of Hidalgo County, which lay to the north by northwest of Yellowback. Somehow, they had turned south. He stomped the ground in frustration and, quite out of character, let out a string of profanity that would have, he thought, made the devil blush.

Finally, they set off with the sun securely to their right. Since Nellie limped, Tom walked and led her. He had no idea where they were except that Hastings lay somewhere ahead and Mexico behind them. The wind had died, and the sun’s welcome arrival drove the worst of the chill away. By mid-morning, he was hungry and thirsty, as he knew Nellie was.

Then he saw a line of green ahead. Trees meant water. Nellie sensed it too and sped up despite her injury, as did Tom. The shallow creek lay some forty or fifty yards beyond an apron of grass lined by willows and cottonwoods.

Nellie stood in the shallows and drank her fill. Tom drank from his canteen and then knelt to refill it. Sand covered Tom’s rumpled shirt and trousers, but the cold kept him from stripping to wash them. And if they happened upon a town, he didn’t want to enter it with wet clothing. He settled for washing his hands and face and brushing off as much sand as possible. A bloody knee showed through a tear in his trousers.

After they had slaked their thirst, Tom lay in the grass pretending the sun had warmed the day and allowed Nellie to graze the winter-sere grass. For the first time in weeks, he thought about Priscilla. He had gotten over her, of course. In fact, he felt embarrassed to have fallen for her. He wondered what her prim Victorian parents thought about her running off to Prescott with that drummer.

At about noon, they left their oasis. Tom rode Nellie across the creek to keep his feet dry and then dismounted. As they continued their journey, Tom saw a few homesteaders’ farms but avoided them. He could expect no help from them and didn’t want them telling Stephen they had seen a bedraggled-looking man with a limping horse headed north.

Around midmorning, they happened onto a rutted road. About a mile away, he saw the outskirts of a town. At last, he would find out where he was and how far he had to go to reach Hastings.

Chapter Four

The wind returned as if to announce his arrival to the town. Dust and tumbleweeds followed him down the street as he passed a few small, dust-covered, unpainted houses before he saw any sign of life.

He spotted a wind-scoured church that might have received a coat of whitewash a century before. On the next block, a general store sat across the street from a saloon. Beyond lay a few other businesses. A hotel with an attached livery stable sat at the end of the business district. A few buckboards and buggies were parked along the street, and several horses stood at hitchrails, especially in front of the saloon. The few people he saw on the boardwalks, men and women, stared at him impassively.

He went to the livery stable first. Three old men loafed on a bench in front of it. They glared suspiciously at Tom but none spoke. He said, “Is one of you the proprietor?”

They all stood. One shouted into the stable. “Hey, Jake, you’re needed out here.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice that landed near Tom’s foot and then moved away with the others.

A young fellow came outside, wiping his hands on a rag. He smiled at Tom and introduced himself as Jake, the son of the hotel manager. “Dad makes us kids work our way up. My sis Emma’s cooking this week.”

At least one smiling face, Tom thought. He introduced himself and told Jake how he’d like Nellie tended and fed. “Look especially at her front left fetlock. She had a fall last night.”

Jake said, “I can tell you and her done some hard riding. I’ll treat her like a baby.”

Tom was so tired and hungry that he wanted nothing more than to rest and find a restaurant, but he had business to take care of first. He went to the building with the “Hardaway City Hall” sign that he had passed on his way to the livery stable. If the town had a marshal, Tom should find an office there.

Inside, he went to the only person he saw—a middle-aged, prune-faced woman in a welcoming cage. She looked him up and down without speaking, her mouth pursed in distaste.

He forced himself to smile. “Hello. I’m looking for—”

“Clarence!” she yelled over her shoulder without taking her eyes off him.

A rangy-looking man with a drooping mustache appeared from somewhere deep within the building. Looking Tom over and glaring, he said, “Yeah, whadda y’ want?”

“I’m looking for the marshal to report—”

“I’m the mayor and the marshal when the need arises. We don’t have that problem just now. We invite undesirables to leave as soon as they hit town.” Clarence was clearly inviting him to leave.

Tom decided to try once more. “Listen, a criminal has threatened to kill me and—”

The man leaned forward with his face too close to Tom. “So you aired your lungs to some cowboy and you think he’s after you. I can tell two things from your clothes: you ain’t no cowboy, and you’re scared of a real one.”

Tom knew “airing your lungs” meant cussing. “Of course I’m not a cowboy. I’m a barber. You ought to be interested in this criminal. He may come here next.”

“‘Criminal,’ huh?” He looked over his shoulder. “Can you beat that, Maude? This tenderfoot used a city-fied word.” Maude primly ignored him. “Okay, who’s this criminal?”

“Stephen McKenna.”

“McKenna’s follerin’ you here?” Clarence grabbed Tom’s shirt front in both hands. “I oughta throw you in jail right now.”

Tom had had enough. He yanked away from Clarence’s grip, which tore his shirt even further, then turned and stormed out. The few people who saw him disappeared into stores. Wanting to find someone to warn about McKenna and point him toward Hastings, he followed a man and woman into the general store.

Inside, the couple disappeared into the store’s dim bowels. It smelled of mold and decay, and the shelves held dust-covered goods. Behind the counter stood a tall, erect man, bald and bearded. His dignified mien and shaven upper lip reminded him of a professor at a college Tom had attended for a year. At last, he thought. Someone he could communicate with.

“Sir,” he began, “my name is—”

“I must ask you, sir,” the man interrupted, “are you the ragged hooligan who has been running up and down the street causing mischief?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, that was me but I’m not—”

“We watched you lead that wretched nag down to the hotel and then invade the city tall. Miss Maude must be all a-dither. We’ve had enough of your kind. If Clarence Temple isn’t man enough to rid the town of you,” he withdrew a shotgun from beneath the counter, “I most certainly am. Now begone, sir, before I fill your filthy carcass with birdshot.”

Tom fled. Compared to the store’s dank interior, the cold, windy, dusty outdoors felt healthy. He kicked a tumbleweed aside and limped back to the livery stable. When he reached it, he sank hopelessly onto one of the barrels in front. Tired, hungry, and dressed n rags, he had no more options.

The stable door opened. Though too tired to look up, Tom sensed Jake approaching.

Jake took another barrel. “Looks like our town got your goat, Mr. Bradley.”

Tom looked over at the young man. “What makes these people so cantankerous?”

“They live on farms and small ranches in a desert. The mining they depended on gave out, and every scalawag and gunslinger in Arizona comes through town and shoots up Simmons’ saloon. And let’s face it, speakin’ a scalawags…” Jake chuckled.

Tom grinned. “I know, I know. I’m not the best-dressed galoot to come through here. But I tried to tell them about a bad one chasing me who might show up. And nobody’ll listen to me.”

“I’ll listen.”

So, Tom gave Jake an abbreviated version of Dickie’s death and his fight with Stephen. “My next step is to get to Hastings. How far is that from here?”

Jake shook his head. “In the next county. A good fifty miles. Your mare’ll never make it lame, but she’ll be okay after she lays up for a couple days. Colleen might help you. She’s kind of an eccentric gal that lives on a ranch outsida town apiece. She helps find homes for strays and orphans sometimes.” He looked at Tom’s unshaven face. “How long’s it been since you et?”

“It’s been so long I don’t rightly remember.”

“Hang on a minute.” And Jake disappeared. After Tom had spent a few minutes wondering about this “eccentric” Colleen, Jake returned with a plate of food. “Leftovers from the hotel’s lunch. I couldn’t invite you inside, but….”

Tom grinned as he reached for the plate. “I imagine I smell pretty ripe.” He dug in: beef, half a boiled potato, and beans. All cold. It tasted like ambrosia.

As he ate, Jake gave him directions to Colleen’s ranch. “Be sure and mention Stephen and Dickie to her.”

Tom wondered at that but said, “Much obliged, Jake.” They shook hands and Tom led Nellie out to begin the next leg of their journey.

Chapter Five

We’re well-matched travelers, Nellie, Tom thought. Limping toward an uncertain future. He grinned. Sorry about the melodrama, old girl.

Hardaway lay out of sight to the rear, and the desert lay dead around them. He wondered if he would live to see its flowery rebirth in the distant spring. The wind skirled madly through the rocky terrain that rose around him as dismal cloud cover moved in from the east. He lost track of how long he had been walking, but it had been some hours. The afternoon had grown old.

Feeling the presence of someone or something watching him made him involuntarily shiver. He drew the Winchester 94 out of its scabbard and carried it over his shoulder, which gave him scant security.

After he rounded the shoulder of a rocky hill, something made him look up. To his right, far above, he saw a man mounted on a slate gray horse. A wide-brimmed hat concealed his face in shadow, and a loose corner of the serape enwrapping him flapped in the wind. Most ominously, a rifle lay across the pommel of his saddle.

Now what? Tom shuddered, wondering how long the man had been tailing him.

He topped a rise and looked down on a fertile valley, watered by a broad, shallow, willow-shaded stream. A substantial house with smoke escaping its chimney lay behind a winter-yellow lawn. The requisite structures of a ranch—corral, stables and other outbuildings, large garden—lay along the creek. That had to be Colleen’s home.

He looked up to find that the rider had disappeared. He slipped the Winchester back into its scabbard.

As he and Nellie limped down a gentle slope and across a broad meadow, horses nickered from the stable. A porch ran along the entire length of the house. Crossing the lawn, he became aware of a figure standing in the shadow of the porch’s roof, holding a rifle across her chest. He stopped at what seemed a neutral distance and removed his hat.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you Miss Colleen?”

“Who wants to know?” She had a firm contralto voice.

“I’m sorry, I’m Tom Bradley. Jake from the hotel suggested I come see you. Nellie and I”—he stroked her mane—“have had a bit of bad luck. We hoped you might let us sleep in your barn overnight. We’ll be gone early in the morning.”

She looked him over without expression while he examined her. Her youth surprised him. Since Jake described her as “eccentric,” Tom had expected a matronly woman. She was tall for a woman, dressed in a man’s jeans and a work shirt with the top button open. And pretty, as far as he could tell from a distance, hampered by the porch’s shadow, a Stetson pulled low over her eyes.

“Juaquin,” she called to someone behind him. He wheeled to see the vaquero who had spied on him from the hill, sitting his horse some distance away. “¿Qué opinas?” And looking back at Tom, “I’m sorry. I asked what he thought.”

Juaquin shrugged as he rode closer. He still held his ancient carbine across the pommel of his saddle. “El mira okay.”

“Juaquin says you look okay to him. I think you look kind of, uh, bedraggled. Tell me about the bad luck you and Nellie ran into.”

His weariness made him wish she would just let him collapse in a pile of hay in the stable. He wanted to forget McKenna instead of reliving the story again.

“Well, you see, I’m a barber, and in the absence of a doctor, I do what I can to help sick and injured people. I heard someone banging on my door last night”—Had it only been last night?—“so I answered it to find two men there, one badly injured. A gunshot wound through his lung. I find out they’re wanted by the law—”

“Who were they?”

“Their names were McKenna and—”

“Stephen and Richard? Which one was injured and how bad? Oh, wait. You’re about to collapse. Come up here.”

Tom realized that he had indeed stumbled.

She stepped down off the porch, took his arm—while still clutching her rifle in her other hand—and helped him up to the porch. She settled him in a rocking chair and faced him from another. Juaquin walked his horse to the edge of the porch and took hold of Nellie’s reins.

“Now,” she said, clearly struggling to remain patient, “explain what happened to the McKennas. In detail. Don’t leave anything out.”

So he explained the encounter, with frequent interruptions from Colleen to elicit details. With her face near his, listening so intently, he found her startlingly green eyes distracting. When he mentioned discovering the pneumothorax, she grasped his arm. As he described the younger one’s death, she looked away and bit her lower lip. After he finished, she leaned back in her chair and they both sat without speaking. He wondered if she and Dickie had been lovers.

He couldn’t help glancing at her occasionally. He found her uncommonly beautiful, despite the freckles. He wondered how her wavy, reddish-brown hair would look loosened from its tight bun.

But his weariness and pain made him feel faint. Finally, he said, “About that stay in your stable…”

She sprang up, her brooding finished. “What a terrible hostess I am! I’m sure you won’t be offended by my suggestion that you’d like a bath and a change of clothes. By then Lupe’s wonderful pozole should be ready. And then, we’ll see…”

When she looked at Juaquin, Tom saw him nod slightly.

Her smile brightened Tom’s dismal day.

---

“Final Showdown at High Noon” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Tom Brady, a barber in a small western town, has no experience with the world of violence. When a notorious gunslinger comes to town, blaming Tom for his brother’s death, he knows his life is at risk. He must find a way to save himself, even if it means going on the run with a relentless enemy in pursuit. With nothing but his wits to rely on, Tom embarks on a dangerous journey across the Wild West to seek help.

Can a simple barber survive these threats?

Colleen is a young woman living alone after losing her family. When Tom shows up at her door, seeking a horse to escape his pursuer, she is determined to help. She risks her own safety to assist him, and soon finds herself caught in the crosshairs of a ruthless outlaw.

She’s got more spunk than most men…

Two brave souls must face a heartless enemy in a thrilling adventure. With danger lurking in every corner and no one to turn to, Tom and Melinda must rely on each other to survive. Will they be able to outwit every foe, or will their journey end in carnage?

“Final Showdown at High Noon” is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

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