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Virginia City, Montana. Gold fever struck hard in 1863, with miners pannin' for nuggets up and down the length of nearby Alder Gulch. But a gang of guntoughs was ridin' them roughshod. With the law lookin' the other way, the sidewinders dealt out hot lead for a man shippin' his poke or even carryin' gold dust for his grubstake.
Jeff Pierce had been on the hard dodge since Portland, until he staked his claim at Alder Gulch. As a favor, he carried another miner's poke through the forty miles of danger to Bannack, only to find that the scummy gunhawks had filled the old-timer with buckshot. Now the varmints had Pierce as a marked man. The gang was fixin' for a showdown, but they'd be a mite less cocky if they knew the charge he was up for—murder!
"Ernest Haycox is a master and ALDER GULCH is one of his best."—Dallas Times Herald
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About the author
Ernest James Haycox (October 1, 1899 - October 13, 1950) was an American author of Western fiction.
Born in Portland, Oregon, to William James Haycox and the former Martha Burghardt, he attended local schools of both Washington state and Oregon. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1915 and was stationed along the Mexican border in 1916. During World War I he served in Europe, and after the war he spent one year at Reed College in Portland. In 1923, he graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He married Jill M. Chord in 1925 and the couple had two children.
Haycox published two dozen novels and around 300 short stories, many of which appeared first in pulp magazines in the early 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was a regular contributor to Collier's Weekly from 1931 and The Saturday Evening Post from 1943. Fans of his work included Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.
His story Stage to Lordsburg (1937) was made into the movie Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford and featuring John Wayne in the role that made him a star. The novel Trouble Shooter (1936), originally serialized in Collier's, was the basis for the movie Union Pacific (1939), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. Haycox wrote the screenplay for Montana (1950), directed by Ray Enright, which stars Alexis Smith and Errol Flynn.
Haycox died in 1950, at the age of 51, in Portland. In 2005 the Western Writers of America voted Haycox one of the 24 best Western authors of the Twentieth Century.
