Showdown at Deer Creek (Avalon Western) - Tapa dura

Early one morning Sheriff Lane Tipton rode out from Deer Creek, Texas, with one of his two prisoners, Tater Rankin, in tow. He was transporting Rankin to Fort Worth to stand trial for robbery. Leaving his deputy behind to watch the town and the other prisoner, notorious killer named Blackie Getts, Tipton rides out intending to be gone just a few days, expecting no trouble.

Two days later Blackie's gang rides into town, kills the deputy and three other influential men in town then set up camp waiting for the sheriff to return. Getts fully intends to kill the sheriff for locking him up. As they are waiting, they capture Tipton's fiancée and debate about ransoming her off to her father or waiting for the reaction of the sheriff.

Meanwhile, Tipton and Rankin stumble across a family deserted in the middle of nowhere after being robbed. They set out to find the thieves but find themselves in a heap of trouble: Getts decides to take off after Tipton and the two parties will soon meet back in Deer Creek with in hours of each other for a brutal showdown.

D.J. Bishop was born more than fifty years ago, the sixth of seven children, to a cowboy father and hardworking mother, right square-dab in the middle of cattle country, where the nearest town was several miles away and a place seldom visited. Much of what he writes about today comes from the many Sunday evenings he spent after dinner sitting on the front porch, listening with great interest as his family and friends told their stories.