Modern Western Mysteries

Ty Dawson, now the sheriff of Oregon's Meriwether County, is ready to put a trying year behind him, but he's afforded no such luck. In a country still coming to grips with the Vietnam War, Watergate, and Charles Manson, Ty's neck of the woods isn't safe from the turmoil-especially when a commune of young so-called hippies springs up out of nowhere . . .

When cowboy artist Willie Russell is murdered on the Branding Iron Ranch, Sheriff Charles Matthews faces a mystery that seems built on the bones of the past. Willie Russell leaves behind sketches that illustrate a century-old legend of a brutal outlaw, a beautiful young woman, and the lost Santiago Crucifix, a three-foot-tall cross of solid gold. With only the sketches, the footprints of Johnny Brentwood, and very little else, Charles focuses on the eerie links between past and present events. Were Willie's sketches the story of the past, or a portent of the future?

Crawford County, Texas, hadn't had a deliberate homicide in 80 years, and Sheriff Charles Matthews liked that statistic just fine, particularly since his department wasn't generously endowed with manpower. Folks in Crawford County didn't altogether understand Charles Matthews. It wasn't his law degree - lots of folks had law degrees and were still respectable - and it wasn't the fact he was from Dallas. It wasn't even because he never told anybody why he left Dallas. It was because Charles had no nickname in an area where nicknames were as common as sagebrush.