Showdown at Sunset
The Holloway gang burned the last town they visited. Eleven riders, one sheriff, and eight hours to decide whether Red Mesa fights or folds.
Story Overview
Sheriff Jake Morgan has kept Red Mesa quiet for three years by being the kind of man trouble doesn't look for twice. That changes on a Tuesday in October when Deputy Rosa Vega rides in hard with word that the Holloway gang—eleven riders, two of them wanted in three territories—cleared out of Tucson and are heading north. Estimated arrival: sunset. Jake has most of a day, a two-man department, and a town that has been quiet long enough to forget what the alternative looks like. What he decides in the next eight hours will define what kind of lawman he is and what kind of town Red Mesa wants to be.
Chapter Index
Readers can start from the beginning or jump to the latest published chapter.
Main Characters
These profiles stay visible at the story level so late-arriving readers can catch up quickly.
Sheriff Jake "Iron" Morgan
Jake earned the 'Iron' twenty years ago in a story he never tells to the same way twice, which suggests either the truth is worse than any version or better than all of them. He is fifty-one, still fast, and tired in the way a man gets tired when he's been right about things for long enough that he stopped enjoying it. He came to Red Mesa to wind down. The town, apparently, didn't get that message.
Deputy Rosa Vega
Rosa is twenty-six and has been deputy for eighteen months, which is long enough to know that Jake's instincts are good and short enough to still argue about why. She's the faster rider, the better shot at distance, and the one who went to Tucson to verify the rumor when Jake said it was probably nothing. She was right. He was wrong. She has not made a large production of this.
Eli Bransen
Eli has been running the Long Rail saloon for eleven years and has a practiced gift for knowing things without being asked and saying them without being pushed. He served the Holloway gang once, in a different town, in a different life. He doesn't talk about that. He does, occasionally, talk around it.
Old Man Holloway
Cornelius Holloway is sixty-three and runs his outfit the way he runs everything—with the patient certainty of a man who has outlived everyone who ever tried to stop him. He is not, technically, the most dangerous member of his own gang. He is, however, the one who decides when to leave and what to leave behind.