Spawn of the Desert
By Tuttle, W. C.
In the sun-scorched silver camp of Calico, where water costs more than whiskey and the graveyard known as Hell's Depot fills faster than the church pews, two mysterious drifters arrive out of the desert haze. Paget Le Saint, a white-bearded patriarch with the face of a prophet and the past of an outlaw, is mistaken for a preacher—a role he wears as easily as his secrets. At his side walks Duke Steele, a quiet gunman who alone suspects how dangerous his companion truly is. When the camp's iron-fisted boss, Silver Sleed, hears the old man's name, something in him shifts—and his sheltered daughter, hungry for learning, draws both strangers into a tangle of hidden histories. Beneath the painted cliffs of the Calico Mountains, the desert keeps its mysteries—but not forever.
Publisher: The Garden City Publishing Company
First published: 1922