In the heyday of American Western cinema, bestselling author Mickey Spillane wrote a film script for his good friend and Hollywood legend, John Wayne, star of western classics like Stagecoach, The Searchers , and True Grit . Though the film was never made, Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane's literary partner and executor, has adapted the original screenplay into a hard-hitting, action-packed novel that evokes the classic Westerns of the Duke. Trading his trench coat for a duster and Stetson, Spillane turns out to be every bit as compelling in the western genre as in his immortal detective stories. In this first novel in a bold new Western series, crooked Sheriff Harry Gauge rules the town of Trinidad, New Mexico, with an iron fist. His latest scheme is to force rancher George Cullen into selling his spread and to take Cullen's beautiful daughter Willa for his bride--whether she's willing or not. The old man isn't about to go down without a fight. He sends out a telegram to hire the west's toughest gunslinger to kill the sheriff. But when a stranger rides into Trinidad, no one's sure who he is. Wherever he came from, wherever he's going, it's deadly clear he's a man who won't be pushed--and that he's a damn good shot. . . With stirring authenticity and heart-racing drama, Spillane and Collins add Caleb York to the roster of unforgettable western heroes. The Legend of Caleb York By Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP. Copyright © 2015 Mickey Spillane Publishing LLC All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-61773-594-3 CHAPTER 1 Everybody called it Boot Hill, but there was no hill about it—not even a rise on the flat, dusty ground just off the rutted road half a mile out of Trinidad, New Mexico. The spot had been chosen because of a resilient mesquite tree that provided some color and shade, but this scrubby patch of earth otherwise had nothing to recommend it. For serving a town of less than three hundred, this was a well-populated cemetery, wooden crosses clustered with the occasional flat tombstones popping up like road markers. On this April morning, a breeze flapped hat brims and bandanas into flags and stirred dust into foot-hugging ghosts. Like diffident mourners, distant buttes lurked, turned a light rust color by a sun still on the rise, faces of their steep cliffs sorrowful with the dark shadows of erosion. Willa Cullen, her father's only daughter—only offspring—by rights should have worn a Sunday dress, its hem weighted down with sewn-in buckshot to fight the wind. But she was in a red-plaid shirt and denim trousers and boots with stirrup-friendly heels, the kind of work clothes worn by the handful of her papa's ranch hands that could be spared to attend the small, sad graveside service for Bud Meadow. Reverend Caldwell from Trinidad's church, Missionary Baptist, presided over this congregation of half-adozen cowhands, their boss, his daughter, and a dead boy in a pine box in its fresh hole. No townsfolk were present. No surprise, really. Nobody knew Bud very well. He'd drifted in looking for work, Papa had given it to him, and come first pay, end of the month, Bud had gotten himself shot outside the Victory Saloon. Trinidad had a reputation for looking the other way when cowhands came in on those particular Friday nights. It became routine for any business—save the Victory, the two restaurants, and the barbershop—to board up their windows till the boys got it out of their systems. In front, the affected businesses just stacked the lumber up under the windows along the boardwalks. But Bud had mouthed off to the sheriff, and the sheriff had shot him down in the street. Funny how only the Cullen cowhands seemed to wind up that way—half a dozen were already buried here on Boot Hill. Now among them was a Meadow, planted but never to blossom. Who were his parents? Willa wondered. Did he have brothers or sisters? Friends forged on trail drives? They would never know. No date of birth, no full name. Just a white wooden cross, freshly painted but soon to be windblown and blistered. Willa was a pretty thing but not delicate, near tall as her father but with her late Swede mother's hourglass figure and also the same straw-yellow hair worn up and braided back. She had been called a tomboy in her youth, but was too much of a woman for that now, though she often wore ranching-style riding apparel like today. She meant no disrespect to the late Bud Meadow. She just knew she needed to be dressed to ride, though her father—in his black Sunday suit and string tie and felt hat—had brought the big buggy, drawn by a pair of horses, with plenty of room for her to sit beside. Really, this was about Papa's stubbornness. In buggy or wagon, he refused to let his daughter take the reins, leaving her to ride alongside on Daisy, her calico, and surreptitiously guide the hitched-up horses, should Papa need the help he refused. Leaving the hard-packed, rutted road to take the turn into