Three Days to Justice

Three days of bad country between one man and a hanging — and the marshal who had to decide which side of the law the truth was on. Marshal Eli Brandt has one job: deliver Jesse Cole, alive, to the district court at San Lope, where the young drifter is to stand trial for the murder of rancher Tom Mercer. Every soul in Dry Fork believes Cole did it — his rifle was found by the body, and half the town heard him quarrel with Mercer three days before the killing. But sixty miles of desert has a way of stripping a story down to its bones. Somewhere between the fouled water hole and the ambush in the arroyo, Brandt stops believing the story he's escorting — and starts believing the man in his chains. Worse, Silas Crane, the land baron who wants the whole valley before the railroad comes, wants Jesse Cole dead on the trail and the truth buried with him. Three Days to Justice is Book Two of the Dry Fork western trilogy.