http://amzn.com/0425246930
This one should be available now in most stores, including Barnes and Noble, and next week from Amazon.
In the latest Cuno Massey yarn, Cuno and Deputy U.S. Marshal Spurr Morgan team up with a beautiful Yaqui princess--beautiful an' mean an' nasty, that is!--chasing gunrunners, who sacked a U.S. Army fort, deep in Mexico. They end up fighting not only the gunrunners but also the Federales the gunrunners are running the guns to, and who've piss-burned the Yaqui good by trying to tunnel through the Indians' sacred mountain so they can lay railroad tracks to a gold mine.
Watch for the start of Spurr's own series, THE LAST LAWMAN, coming in October...
Here's a short excerpt from .45-CALIBER CROSS FIRE:
A hard rock fell in Cuno’s gut, and for an instant, fear
froze him. The mountain lion gave its tooth-gnashing shriek, brown eyes flashing demonic
yellow, its tail curling up viciously. Cuno dropped the knife and the rabbit
and grabbed his rifle, but by the time he’d gotten a cartridge levered, the cat
was a gray-brown blur diving toward him from the rocky ridge, extending its
long, thick body and giving another wail.
Cuno raised the rifle defensively, as though to shield
himself from the beast. The cat plowed into him, knocking his onto his back so
hard, smacking his head on the gravelly ground so resoundingly, that for
several seconds he felt ensconced in warm tar. There was a floating feeling.
Was he dead?
He blinked his eyes, and as they cleared, he saw the cat’s
eyes flashing yellow at him. The lids were slowly drooping closed, and the
pupils were narrowing to black pinpoints. The wet tongue, flecked with white
foam, came to rest in a corner of its open mouth, the cat’s fang’s looking
steel blue in the last light.
The smell emanating from the open mouth was like old urine
and rotten meat.
Wrinkling his nose, Cuno canted his head to the left. The
fletched end of an arrow protruded from the cat’s thick, gray-brown neck. Cuno
turned his head the other way and saw the razor-edged, strap-iron arrow point,
coated in blood, protruding six inches from the cat’s shoulder. Blood oozed out
around the ash-wood shaft and started to dribble slowly down through the cat’s
fur.
He could feel the heart fluttering in the beast’s chest,
but the cat was a deadweight pinning him to the ground.
He got his knees and arms under it and heaved it off his
side, then slid his legs out and gave it a kick. A brown figure dropped
straight down off the opposite ridge and landed on the canyon floor with a
solid thud. Still holding her bow, Fire Eyes strode toward him and looked down
with the expression of an overwrought schoolteacher.
“Rifles make too much noise,” she said tonelessly.
Cuno stared up at the scantily clad Yaqui beauty, his heart still hammering, feeling
genuinely chagrined.
He sat up, looked at his half-skinned rabbit and then at
the big cat. The rabbit he'd shot for the stew pot appeared little larger than one of the painter’s broad
paws.
“Thanks for supper,” he said.
Saying nothing, Fire Eyes pulled a bowie knife with an
elkhorn handle from her belt sheath, dropped to her knees, and went to work
butchering the wildcat.
Fighting off the hot flush in his cheeks, Cuno retrieved
his own knife and helped her.
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