Dead Man's Hand
(2026)(The second book in the Rattlesnake Hollow series)
A novel by Peter Alan Turner
A marshal lies dead in the snow, a stagecoach has been left blood-soaked and empty, and the killers who control the mountain road believe no one is coming after them. They have not counted on Hunter Jones carrying a dead man’s work beneath his own badge.
Only two weeks into his new role as sheriff of Rattlesnake Hollow, Hunter rides south to investigate cattle rustlers and finds Territorial Marshal Harlan Briggs murdered at close range. Harlan’s badge, gun, and papers are gone, but the trail leads to a remote stage station where repeated robberies have left passengers beaten, stranded, and freezing while the men responsible vanish into the timber.
Clara Vane has kept the station running alone since Harlan’s death, and now her younger brother Tommy is missing from the latest attacked stage. A frightened survivor named Jesse Cook claims he saw the scarred outlaw commanding the robberies, but the evidence surrounding him raises dangerous questions. With a payroll shipment scheduled to pass through the same killing ground, Hunter must decide whom to trust before the road claims another coach.
The truth points toward Ezra Holt, an escaped convict with a personal grievance against Harlan, Clara, and the stage line that helped send him to prison. Holt has turned Miller’s Gap into a trap, framed innocent men to confuse the pursuit, and built his revenge around the certainty that fear will keep everyone divided. Hunter intends to prove him wrong by finishing the investigation Harlan died solving and forcing the outlaw to play his final hand.
Ride into Dead Man’s Hand, the second Rattlesnake Hollow Western, where every witness carries a secret, every trail disappears beneath the snow, and the weight of a fallen marshal’s badge drives Hunter Jones toward a reckoning on the deadliest road in the territory.
Genre: Western
Only two weeks into his new role as sheriff of Rattlesnake Hollow, Hunter rides south to investigate cattle rustlers and finds Territorial Marshal Harlan Briggs murdered at close range. Harlan’s badge, gun, and papers are gone, but the trail leads to a remote stage station where repeated robberies have left passengers beaten, stranded, and freezing while the men responsible vanish into the timber.
Clara Vane has kept the station running alone since Harlan’s death, and now her younger brother Tommy is missing from the latest attacked stage. A frightened survivor named Jesse Cook claims he saw the scarred outlaw commanding the robberies, but the evidence surrounding him raises dangerous questions. With a payroll shipment scheduled to pass through the same killing ground, Hunter must decide whom to trust before the road claims another coach.
The truth points toward Ezra Holt, an escaped convict with a personal grievance against Harlan, Clara, and the stage line that helped send him to prison. Holt has turned Miller’s Gap into a trap, framed innocent men to confuse the pursuit, and built his revenge around the certainty that fear will keep everyone divided. Hunter intends to prove him wrong by finishing the investigation Harlan died solving and forcing the outlaw to play his final hand.
Ride into Dead Man’s Hand, the second Rattlesnake Hollow Western, where every witness carries a secret, every trail disappears beneath the snow, and the weight of a fallen marshal’s badge drives Hunter Jones toward a reckoning on the deadliest road in the territory.
Genre: Western
Used availability for Peter Alan Turner's Dead Man's Hand