Sugarfoot

WHEN TWO MEN HATE EACH OTHER TO THE UTMOST - AND LOVE THE SAME WOMAN JUST AS PASSIONATELY - NOT EVEN THE VASTNESS OF ARIZONA CAN HOLD THEM!"A story of pioneer Arizona, after the Civil War. Jackson Redan, of gentle Southern blood, learns the hard way when he comes to Prescott. His mentors are a wise Jewish merchant, a far seeing saloon owner, an outspoken landlady, and his enemy, Jacob Stint, given to lawlessness and ruthlessness. Their quarrel comes to a head over Reva, singing in the saloon, but wanting a respectable life, which "Sugarfoot"" can give her once he has beaten Stint. Good workmanlike job of action and color." -Kirkus ReviewsInto Arizona, untamed frontier of outlaws, schemers and gambling hells, came: SUGARFOOT JACK REDAN, ex-soldier, fresh out of the aristocracy of the south, eager for a place in this raw, barren land;JACOB STINT, shrewd, ruthless, brawler, lusting for a new world to conquer;REVA CARIN, who sang in the town's most famous saloon - but she was no saloon-girl, even if the ladies of Prescott shifted their skirts aside when she walked by...Drawn together by bonds of hate, love, lust and desire for their own place in the vast lands of the West, all three would be present at the frontier's most terrifying shootout.***There were snickers, some muffled, some outright, when Jack Redan, a seeming dandy whose manners stemmed from a life of leisure in the aristocracy of the South, arrived in the brawling little Arizona boom town of Prescott. He was quickly nicknamed Sugarfoot - and that meant greenhorn dude - and everybody got ready for the sport that would surely follow the christening.Nobody figured on Sugarfoot. Nobody except Riva Carin who he professed to love, but who understood that word very differently than he did. Riva wondered if he could ever understand she was not a woman to be protected and pampered but one who wanted to stand beside a man as an equal partner in life. None of the rest of Prescott realized the steel he had become during the late Civil War. None of them expected him to stun the whole of Arizona with his slashing fists and the speed of his draw. And nobody, not even Sugarfoot himself, gave him a ghost of a chance when the three men whose lust for power he dared oppose trapped him in a tiny room, guns drawn, cold-blooded killing in their eyes."Mr. Kelland delineates the emotions of his lovers with a psychological penetration exceptional in Western fiction narratives, and shows equal craftsmanship in the action scenes." -NYTimes