The rusted sun
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Half-frozen and nearly dead, Gil Ryan rode into the little mountain town of Larkspur just ahead of a raging late-winter blizzard. He'd lost everything he owned except for his mount and the clothes on his back when his pack horse fell through the ice on the Big Sandy River. Racked with fever, early-stage pneumonia, and a barely healed gunshot wound, all he wanted was a little medicine and a warm place to wait out the storm. But Gil had no way of knowing the surrounding Ensillado Basin was about to be plunged into a range war, or that the man whose bullet he carried, the same professional killer who had murdered his brother the previous fall, was also in the Ensillado, leading an army of hired guns to rid the Basin of its homesteaders and small ranchers. Even before he's fully healed, Gil is mistaken for a member of the opposing side. Forced into a war he doesn't want and feels ill-equipped to handle, he assembles a ragtag army of reluctant townspeople and local homesteaders and sets out to bring order to the town of Larkspur and the grass-rich basin surrounding it. But there's more at play in the Ensillado than Gil originally realized. Soon he finds himself in the battle of his life, the stakes a kindly doctor's loyalty, a widow's promise of love, and a chance to bring his brother's killer to justice... assuming the town doesn't turn on him when the bullets start to fly.