Apache Creek Ambush

Sixteenth in the Tales of the Old Wild West series by prolific western author Doyle Trent.
In the tradition of the John Wayne classic westerns and legendary television series Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

The Wild West. If the elements, rattlers, coyotes, and Indian's didn't kill you...the person sitting next to you in the saloon just might...just for the hell of it. This series is presented as self-contained standalone story novels that do not have to be read in any particular order. It gives readers an entertaining glimpse into what individuals from all walks of life encountered as they traversed the untamed western landscape seeking fortune, glory, a new start, or keeping one step ahead of the law behind them.

HANGING TREE JUSTICE
In the dark years following the executions at the Hanging Tree that left ten-year-old Jim Waggoner an orphan, he'd learned to fork his own horse and ride his trail-until the trail led him back to Apache Creek where it'd all begun. Jim hadn't returned lookin' for vengeance, just to find the graves of his ma and pa and maybe a memento to remember them by. But he hadn't been in town long before he found himself starin' into the bore of a hogleg held by a flat-eyed gunsel who wanted him gone-or better still, dead.

The prairie cowtown of Apache Creek hadn't even been built when Jim was a boy. Now the vast Bar W ranch owned the land once homesteaded by his folks and the cattle that grazed there would be shipped to market on the new Kansas Pacific line that had just been put through to Denver. But somethin' about that People's Court trail and the double-hanging that followed had someone in Apache Creek mighty worried. Jim didn't know who it was, but he sure as hell was aimin' to find out, and if talkin' with that sidewindin' rattlesnake ranch owner failed to git the right answers, there was always the voice of his .44 Army Colt to make a man listen!