Dead Broke, Colorado Series

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S GUNFIRE.

A crazed pyromaniac is setting fires all over Dead Broke—igniting a desperate hunt to catch the fiend before the whole town burns to the ground . . .

For a struggling mining town like Dead Broke, a dry spell can spell disaster. It’s bad enough that the mines are drying up, but a season-long drought has turned the water muddy. Now the miners and gamblers are starting to leave town. Rival companies of loggers are starting to move in. And the local marshal, Duncan “Mick” MacMicking, has been challenged to a fight by a giant mountain man named “Bull Moose.” But that’s all just a warm-up for the real fireworks . . .

Dead Broke’s got itself a firebug.

The first couple of fires seem natural. A small blaze in an abandoned building. A brush fire in the woods. But when the town’s new bank goes up in flames, Duncan smells a rat behind all the smoke. This is clearly the work of an arsonist—and he’s just getting started. Soon a whole series of raging conflagrations are burning everything to a cinder, from the local schoolhouse to the nearby Ute camp. Duncan’s no fireman but he is a lawman. And as God is his witness, he’s going to send this infernal maniac back to the Hell he crawled out of—or go out in a blaze of glory . . .

Live Free. Read Hard.

Welcome to Dead Broke, Colorado. Where all that glitters is not gold—it’s silver. Where miners and grifters get rich or go broke. And where the money flows like blood . . .

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. COLORADO OR BUST.

The town got its unusual name when a pair of brokedown prospectors accidentally dropped a stick of dynamite in the Rockies—and unwittingly unearthed a massive vein of silver. One of the two men dropped dead from excitement. The other one named the place “Dead Broke” in honor of his dead broke companion and declared himself mayor of a brand-new mining town. Mayor Allane Auchenleck—better known as Nugget—put Dead Broke on the map. But when the silver market takes an unexpected nosedive, the bustling boomtown goes bust . . .

And all hell breaks loose.

Almost overnight, Dead Broke turns into a lawless hotbed of angry out-of-work miners and out-for-blood merchants. In desperation, Mayor Nugget considers a few hairbrained schemes like bringing in mail-order brides, building ice castles to attract tourists, even planting other minerals in the mines to fool investors. But Dead Broke needs law and order, so Nugget sends for top gun Mick MacMicking. Of course, a notorious gambler named Connor Boyle has other plans—and with his band of hired guns he plans to blow Dead Broke off the map to get what he wants.

For this town to survive, Nugget, Mick, a drunken lawman, and a woman gambler will have to put the dead back in Dead Broke . . . and some cool-hand killers in the ground.