Dan Harland was a man with a reputation—a reputation earned through killing. He was a hired gun, and the speed of his .44 was the stuff of legend. He never enjoyed his work, but he did it well and the pay was good. But even the money didn’t help when Harland was hired to hunt down a man who seemed all too ready to be killed. The look in that man's eyes as he died stirred something almost forgotten in Harland's soul...his conscience. All at once, Harland knew he couldn’t rest until he found the mysterious man who had hired him for the job—even if the trail led to his own grave. H(enry) A(ndrew) DeRosso was born on July 15, 1917 in Carey, Wisconsin. This area, in the northeast corner of the state near the Michigan border, is rich in its own pioneer history. Carey and its neighboring community of Hurley in which DeRosso made his home for many years were once rough-and-tumble iron-ore mining towns not unlike the gold, silver, and copper camps of the Far West frontier. This rural milieu, with its harsh winters and its proximity to the vast North Woods, may explain DeRosso's early interest in adventure and Western fiction and his lifelong fascination with the southwestern desert country, a wildness and a climate exactly opposite of the one in which he lived. He began producing Western short stories while a high-school student, making his first professional sale to Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine in 1941. Health problems kept him out of military service during World War II, and and thus he was able to continue writing on a daily basis and to begin piling up sales to Western Story and other pulps during this period, supplementing his income with farm work and as a mail carrier. By the end of the war he had established himself to the point where he was able to devote his full time to writing. Nearly all his tales are set in the stark, desolate wastes of the Southwest. In the decades between 1940 and 1960 he published approximately two hundred Western short stories and short novels in various pulp magazines that became known for their dark and compelling visions of the night side of life and their austere realism. He was also the author of six Western novels, perhaps the most notable of which are .44 (1953) and End of the Gun (1955). He died on October 14, 1960.