‘I ain’t never come across two colder, one-track-minded men in all my life. And if I had to choose between the two of them, I’d have to say Barnaby Gold has the makin’s of bein’ the coldest.’ The storekeeper who had spat before, did it again. And brought the group discussion to an end when he growled: ‘As cold as all them graves he’s dug.’

Mr Gershel, dirtied up and unshaven after early hours working his fields, he looked out of place on the swept stoop in the recently white-painted doorframe flanked by shiningly clean windows. ‘Mornin’ to you, stranger,’ he growled, unsmiling. ‘Joanne, what you doin’ ridin’ with a stranger?’ His Tennessee dialect was more pronounced than that of the girl. As he spoke, somebody else moved in the shadowed interior of the house behind him. ‘Name’s Baraaby Gold, Mr Gershel. Bring you some bad news.’ He hitched the reins around the brake lever and started to swing down from the wagon. Aware of the suspicion in Gershel’s hard-set face and of the stone-like posture of Joanne who seemed petrified to the seat. Was still in the process of getting off the wagon when the girl sprang to her feet, pointed at Gold and shrieked: ‘He killed them and raped me!’

Oceanville, California nestled by the wide blue waters of the Pacific but it was no vacation resort. More like a retirement home. Leastways, strangers who stumbled on it never came out again alive and mostly never had time to say hi to the folks before they were dead. Unless they were kept around just long enough to pleasure Miss Eve. It was her brother who ran the vicious bunch of hoodlums and Mexican whores who made up the citizenry. So it looked like the end of the road for Barnaby Gold when he came into town, just aiming to buy a horse. But, sure as hell, he didn't reckon on paying with his life.

Gone forever, they said. And good riddance. The most cold-blooded killer that ever came out of the west, they said. Who wiped out an entire family. Just because one of them gave his whore of a wife what she had coming to her. Well, that Barnaby Gold whom folks started to call The Undertaker, he got what was coming to him. When he rode into Dead Man’s Canyon!.

BACK FROM THE DEAD ‘When you and your sister found me half dead where the Mustang River flows into the Rio Grande, you knew I was a killer called The Undertaker.’ She made to interrupt, but a shake of his head was sufficient to make her hold her tongue. ‘I know, you told me that. I couldn’t have been anybody else but the kid those two Double-C hands told you about. What you didn’t tell me was why you loaded me into your passion wagon and nursed me back to health coming to this town. And spent so much of your hard earned money on taking care of me once we got here.’ Again a curt shake of the head forced her to remain silent. ‘And not only took such care of me, Ina. Those, too.’ He nodded to where his gunbelt lay across the caped Ulster on the bureau beside the basin of dirty shaving water. ‘A great deal more you didn’t tell me was anything about who and what I was.’

CAPTAIN Warren Marner said as soon as the scream was abruptly curtailed: ‘There is just one way to end your suffering, Scout Red Hawk. Confess before these witnesses to the rape and murder of my sister Arlene.’ The horses were making a racket still within the barn, but the cavalry officer’s words sounded very clearly even though he did not raise his voice much above a normal conversational level. It was just that his Oxford University educated New England upper crust diction had a quality that enabled it to cut through all but the most raucous of other sounds. ‘Sir!’ a man shouted harshly. ‘What is it?’ ‘Sounds like a rider comin’, sir!’ The hooves of the black gelding clopped in a measured pace on the hard packed trail as Gold took the cheroot from between his clenched teeth and wrinkled his nostrils - detecting through the aromas of growing oranges and lemons and of burning wood the appetising scent of cooking meat. Appetising, at least, if it was the flesh of a pig that was being roasted. Not so if it was human meat. ‘Probably that young smart aleck who was outsmarted by this Apache, Attwell!’ the captain snapped. ‘Check it out! You, too, Sergeant! Ensure I am not interrupted!’