Fires of Fate
By Tuttle, W. C.
On the lawless Canadian–Montana border, Montana cowpuncher Bud Conley has traded his saddle for the scarlet jacket of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police—until a single drink of doctored whisky in Monk Magee's Kingsburg hotel leaves him disgraced, discharged, and the prime suspect in a scandal he cannot remember. Stripped of his uniform but not his nerve, Bud rides out alone toward the very nest of outlaws that framed him, determined to clear his name and break a town no Mountie has yet been able to crack. When the next officer sent into Kingsburg turns up dead in the street and Bud's own revolver is found beside a rifled safe, the case against him hardens from disgrace into something far blacker. With a vengeful half-breed gambler on his trail and the woman he loves convinced of his guilt, Bud must walk the knife-edge between badge and outlaw to deliver the kind of justice the law alone cannot reach. W. C. Tuttle's hard-riding border tale pits one ex-cowpuncher against a town built on smuggled whisky, stolen cattle, and the long memory of the Mounted.
Publisher: The Chaucer Press (in Short Stories Magazine)
First published: 1923