The Puzzle of Sidewinder Gulch. The Arizona Mysteries

A woman from the East, a broken-down cowboy, an unlikely romance and an even less likely showdown.all set in 1941 Arizona - when the old west was still seen over the smoking barrel of a gun! Inspired by a true story! First time ever in book form. Kelland's novels of the West are "Masterful. Recommended reading." -Arizona Republic When Kirsten South's once-wealthy father suddenly passed away, she found he had gone broke, leaving her nothing but a profitless ranch.
Fresh from an East-Coast finishing school, Kirsten set herself a task of fantastic difficulty-managing, quite without experience, a ranch in Arizona. It was the only asset she had left. That, and her hunger for independence, impelled her to make a go of it. Finding that her manager had let the ranch slide, Kirsten discharged him leaving a staff of her maid, a cook, four cowboys and a new arrival: a dirty, ragged, bearded derelict cowpoke named Sundown. Feeling sorry for him, Kirsten decided to give Sundown a chance and offered him a job doing farm work.
Though most cowboys would have turned down the offer as being far beneath them, Sundown accepted. However, he responded bitterly to Kirsten's attempts to treat him with civility, snarling that all he wanted was to do his job, get his paycheck and be left alone. But despite Sundown's rough, unprepossessing appearance and manner, Kirsten couldn't help but notice that when caught off-guard, he spoke like a gentleman. Then came a succession of fiery days with no sign of rain.
As the drought became worse, Kirsten had to dip into her scant funds to buy hay for her starving cattle. Driving the ranch's beat-up old truck into Phoenix, Kirsten saw her father's banker who, while sympathetic, refused to loan her any money until he saw how well she managed over the next few months. She also met Brazee Spillyard, a courtly old rancher from out-of-state, who won her heart instantly and told her without embarrassment that she was his idea of the perfect daughter-in-law.though he did not seem to have a son. Back at the ranch, the endless work and monotony was broken by the call of Sam Boston, a real estate broker.
Boston glibly told Kirsten he had brought a buyer for the ranch, one Philip March. Kirsten told him in no uncertain terms that she would not sell-but as they were leaving, she overheard March grimly declare that he and Boston would "have to put on the pressure." One night the hay was deliberately burned, and the next morning three of her five hands quit, leaving only Ramon and the taciturn Sundown to lighten Kirsten's otherwise impossible workload.
Ramon informed her that a stranger had offered all of them money to quit their jobs. Only he and Sundown had refused. That afternoon Kirsten set out for Phoenix at once, to hire more ranch hands and see the banker. Losing her way among her vast acreage, Kirsten stumbled on a group of men rustling her cattle. Creeping nearer to see who the men were, Kirsten had no idea that she was about to be plunged into the most terrifying experience of her life.or that the two men she was coming to care about most had sworn a blood oath to kill each other the next time they met. Nor did Sundown, riding the fence to check for breaks where the cattle might slip through, realize that his façade as a man who needed no one and nothing was about to be cracked.
Or that he would soon be called on to exercise his legendary skill with a six-shooter-a skill he had come to despise-when he and Kirsten waged the strangest showdown the west had ever seen. Features the never reprinted story of how Kelland came to write this book and a historic profile of Viola McNeil, the real-life cattle woman whose exploits in part inspired this novel and four other critically-acclaimed Clarence Budington Kelland western novels and movies.