When Jace Quinlan rode into Hidetown, he was looking for work. Instead, he wound up in jail with a knot on his head, leg chains around his ankle and an invitation to a hemp party for murder and rustling. After he escaped, he learned the sheriff and his henchmen were behind the rustling, and they had saddled the blame on him, a stranger. That’s when he bowed his neck, dug in his spurs, and came hell-bent at the sheriff from every direction. His only help came from a young woman, two children, and two cantankerous old men. But by using fire, centipedes, snakes, snares, lobo wolves, and brazen gall, Jace whittled away at the gang until the sheriff made a mad dash for Atascosa with Jace right on his tail. Kent Conwell grew up in the wide-open Texas Panhandle in the town of Wheeler, population 848. His love of the West came naturally for his grandfather had run away from his Tennessee home when he was 14 to bullwhack his way to the Panhandle where he later met his future wife who had traveled from Illinois to Texas in a covered wagon. After moving to Fort Worth where Kent was more at home at the stockyards than school, he earned a B.S. and began teaching. Later, he moved to Port Neches where he acquired a M.Ed. and Ph.D. A successful educator, his love for writing about the West has never waned for that was the one period unique to American History. He has won awards for short stories, screenplays, mysteries, and westerns.