Luke Adams was a fun-loving, hi-yu cowboy from Tennessee, but who finished his growing-up chasing long-horn steers through sagebrush that cut chaps like a razor and quickly made men out of boys.
Luke is one of those young men who grew up in hard times, doing a man's work years before he was grown. He also learned early in life to take care of himself, and had learned to shuck a gun quicker than most men.
But, Luke's life as a care-free cowboy came to an abrupt end one white-hot Texas summer day. Three riders came upon Luke while he and another cowboy were at a line shack gathering strays and branding calves. The riders were chasing rustlers.
One of the men was a hothead, the son of a powerful, local rancher. He insisted that Luke and his friend were the rustlers.Luke convinces the leader of three riders, an older man with moves Luke considered to be like that of a big cat, that they had the wrong men. However, he shouldn't have discounted the rancher's son. It was a mistake that would cost several men their lives before all was done.
Luke tells it this way:
That kid though, he was like a dog when you take away a piece of meat he's about to sink his teeth into. He just went mean all of a sudden.Even though I'd put away my Colt, I was still watching close. Hadn't been that I was still watching, I might have missed the kid's move because he drew his gun without me seeing it. All I caught was his wild eyes and the twitch of his right shoulder, and I dove for the dirt and yelled for my partner to do the same as me.
That kid got a shot off, but it went into the earth right beside his own horse because my shot took him right out of the saddle backwards. I heard him scream and heard him hit the ground with a heavy thud. He made no sound after that.
After the dust settles, Luke is warned by the older man that there will be some hard riders coming after him because Briner, the rancher, was a powerful man who would want revenge, and it didn't matter that his kid was in the wrong. The man would have the Texas Rangers looking for him, and he'd be sending his own crew of gunmen.
Luke immediately heads for New Mexico Territory. He is tracked, but manages to elude the men chasing him. Once there, Luke partners with three other men and they buy a small ranch. All goes well for nearly a year. Luke even manages to fall in love. And then one day, Briner found him.
The rancher and every hard-case that rode with him would one day regret they found Luke Adams. They'd regret accidently hurting the girl Luke loved, and would regret shooting one of his partners. The hard-case gunmen that rode with him into New Mexico, would learn that they had come to hang a man who wasn't quite what he appeared to be. He wasn't the usual cowboy who wore a gun for the coyotes, snakes, and other critters. A gun was as familiar to Luke as a rope. He'd spent years as a kid jerking a big, bone-handled .44 out of his waistband and firing it, until he could catch a jackrabbit on the hop and a squirrel on the run.
Those Texas riders found a man who was tougher than the land in which he lived. They also discovered that they had created an enemy who became a relentless foe. They encountered a man who reached a point where he was not content to just defend himself.
They found a man who hunted them.
Down to the last man.
This exciting western fiction novel will keep your attention all the way through. There's romance (Luke falls in love and his biggest surprise in life is that she loves him), there's plenty of action, and even some cowboy humor. Luke Adams is a funny man, and a lover of good cowboy jokes.
You'll like him.Voyle Glover is an attorney living in the state of Indiana, and is the author of several books, fiction and non-fiction, including several westerns westernfiction.com. Glover grew up in Arizona and says, "I love all things western." He began writing westerns in the late 70's and often tells of his first story appearing in the premier issue of Far West, a California publication, directly below his favorite author, Louis L'Amour, whom Glover calls "The Dean of Western Fiction." Glover has written non-fiction and fiction novels. His last non-fiction was "Protecting Your Church Against Sexual Predators: A Legal FAQ for Leaders," (Kregel 2006). Glover works as a private attorney in Merrillville, Indiana. He also works as a contract attorney for the Prosecutor's Office in his state, doing civil forfeitures for the various police departments in the county, from the drug arrests they make where cash and other property is seized which was obtained by the drug dealers by sales of drugs. Of this work, he says: "It is a great shot in the budget arm for law enforcement, so in a sense, crime does pay. At least, in this case, the criminals help pay for the harm they bring to the community, so I feel like I'm doing a service to my community by making these criminal pay, literally, for their crimes." It is this part of him that he brings out most in his westerns, namely, his strong sense of justice. He says, of his books, "I like the good guys to win." Glover's real love is writing, especially westerns, and now and then, science fiction.
