Synopses & Reviews
Mason Hawke has a dark past that he's trying to forget, but now he must choose between wealth and power or saving a town that's under the rule of a corrupt lawman.
Mason Hawke emerged from war a scarred man, a man unable to return to a life of power and privilege. His only way out is to start his life anew, concealing his past from those he encounters. But things don't always go according to plan, which Mason finds out when he stops in a town where he knows the local sheriff, a man who has the town under his thumb. All he wants to do is settle down and pretend the past never happened. But now Mason has to decide whether to live the easy life, forgetting his past, or to risk sacrificing himself, and help the town break free of the tyrannical lawman, at the risk of exposing something he'd wanted to keep buried.
Synopsis
Mason Hawke had success, fame, respect. Then war made him a murderer -- and left him scarred in the worst possible way. Haunted bya past as black as the depths of Perdition, Hawke's looking for a place to start over, to disappear. And Salcedo is just a stop along the trail. A small piece of Hell in Texas, it's a town once run by outlaws and now ruthlessly bullied by a mob that's twice as bad, though they call themselves "lawmen." And the top dog's a man who was once Hawke's childhood friend.
Mason Hawke wants no part of small frontier-town civil war. One's brewing here, and there'll be no way to stay neutral -- especially when conscience and a killer force his hand. But doing the right thing could expose the past Hawke's so desperate to hide -- and even dying might be a preferable fate ...
About the Author
Robert Vaughan is a retired army officer and full-time novelist. His book Survival (under the pseudonym K.C. McKenna) won the Spur Award for best western novel (1994). He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Gulf Shores, Alabama.