The Long Watch
(2026)(The fourth book in the Duke Rowan Western series)
A novel by Robert Hanlon and Clem Mariotte
Broken Pedestal is still rebuilding when the freight wagons roll in.
Hugh Danner steps into Clara Whitaker’s store demanding seventeen dollars in unpaid wages. Wade Crane answers him with a bullet in the back. Marshal Samuel Rourke places Crane under arrest for murder. The settlement has no proper jail, only a stone land office and six days until a federal prisoner wagon can reach them.
Wade’s brother, Merritt Crane, arrives with seventeen armed men and a simple demand: release my brother or watch the town burn. He controls both mountain roads. He buys silence and loyalty with cash. He does not care about the law.
Duke Rowan has already buried too many men for one season. Now he must hold a killer in a makeshift cell while the settlement digs in for a siege. Preacher Kane takes the chair inside the stone walls with a short-barreled Colt and a ruined shoulder. Clara keeps the ledgers and the Winchester. Emily and Tommy turn the infirmary into a field hospital. Every water run, every meal, every opened door is written down and witnessed.
Six days.
Six days of pickets on the ridges, of hostages and betrayal, of a bounty hunter fighting the shakes and a young freight guard deciding which side of the law he belongs on. Six days while the federal wagon crawls toward the high country and Merritt Crane measures how much blood the town is willing to spend.
Duke Rowan came to this camp to heal. The law has arrived in the form of a wounded marshal and a locked cell. The only question left is whether the settlement can hold the line until justice rides in—or whether justice will find only ashes.
Genre: Western
Hugh Danner steps into Clara Whitaker’s store demanding seventeen dollars in unpaid wages. Wade Crane answers him with a bullet in the back. Marshal Samuel Rourke places Crane under arrest for murder. The settlement has no proper jail, only a stone land office and six days until a federal prisoner wagon can reach them.
Wade’s brother, Merritt Crane, arrives with seventeen armed men and a simple demand: release my brother or watch the town burn. He controls both mountain roads. He buys silence and loyalty with cash. He does not care about the law.
Duke Rowan has already buried too many men for one season. Now he must hold a killer in a makeshift cell while the settlement digs in for a siege. Preacher Kane takes the chair inside the stone walls with a short-barreled Colt and a ruined shoulder. Clara keeps the ledgers and the Winchester. Emily and Tommy turn the infirmary into a field hospital. Every water run, every meal, every opened door is written down and witnessed.
Six days.
Six days of pickets on the ridges, of hostages and betrayal, of a bounty hunter fighting the shakes and a young freight guard deciding which side of the law he belongs on. Six days while the federal wagon crawls toward the high country and Merritt Crane measures how much blood the town is willing to spend.
Duke Rowan came to this camp to heal. The law has arrived in the form of a wounded marshal and a locked cell. The only question left is whether the settlement can hold the line until justice rides in—or whether justice will find only ashes.
Genre: Western
Used availability for Robert Hanlon's The Long Watch