Review--Blood in the Dust--5 stars

 William and J. A. Johnstone wrote a book about a Confederate veteran living in an Black Hills’ enclave with many Yankee sympathizers. He was a tracker who saw the depravations of war where brothers fought brothers.  The book is called Blood in the Dust and is about Hunter Buchanon.  Hunter is a young man who has seen the depravations of war and really just wants to be left alone.  He is a man of many talents including gold mining, although his gold dust was found and stolen by another, leaving him and his father pretty destitute. He has a quick temper and a quicker and faster fist to handle most issues.

He has a pet coyote, named Bobby Lee, who exhibits many of traditional traits of a coyote.  Bobby Lee is very protective of both Hunter and his friends including the nice girl turned saloon drinks girl, Anabelle.  Hunter and Anabelle were to be married when Hunter had his gold stolen.  He refuses to expect a woman to marry him when he has nothing in a material sense to offer.

With this as a background, there are family issues to nag hunter—his own as well as Anabelle’s.  There are ne’er-do-wells who get involved and one who loses his life.  This creates of cascading and interlocking stories leading to Hunter becoming the town marshal. Of course, a series of bandits and bad guys appear, and Hunter is determined to solve the crimes they are directly and indirectly responsible for causing.

A beautiful woman from Denver who is hired as the local schoolteacher complicates the story, as does a supposed husband that she shot in a very sensitive place.  As you might guess, there are all sorts of interconnections including family issues that must be solved.

Since in most Westerns, the good guys always win, you might expect this to happen here but there are some unexpected twists that must be handled before any wedding can take place.

This was an enjoyable read and went very rapidly.  It is one of those novels that is just hard to put down and page after page gets turned when the reader wants to know what’s next.