To Make a Man

In this fourth book in bestselling author Peter Brandvold's exciting Bloody Joe western series, the stakes are higher than ever before, and the action is hotter than hellfire! Del Norte Town Marshal "Bloody" Joe Mannion and his junior deputy, Henry "Stringbean" McCallister, run down an especially violent as well as beguiling outlaw in the pretty form of Mathilda Calderon. The senorita is just one pretty girl, but she fights like a leg-trapped puma, leaving Mannion with an arm full of buckshot and Stringbean hurting where a man just shouldn't be attacked, gallblastit! Senorita Calderon is wanted not only for aiding and abetting the commission of a federal crime but to testify in a court trial against her boyfriend, the notorious border bandito and revolutionario, Diego Hidalgo, who stole three Gatling guns from the US Army, wiping out a dozen soldiers in the deadly process. Hidalgo and three members of his gang were captured by the Army. The US Marshal for the Southwestern District has sent three deputy US marshals to retrieve the senorita from Del Norte, and to escort her to Tucson. Bloody Joe believes she will not only identify Hidalgo as the leader of the gang who stole the Gatling guns but will also testify as to the guns' whereabouts.