Ambush at Lakota Crossing

By Terrell L. Bowers

A Black Horse Western from Hale, January 2011

Lakota Crossing was manned by two old codgers and was fifty miles from the nearest town. It had always been the perfect place for an ambush. But when Wayland Lott and his gang of killers planned to rob an army payroll at its way station, they had no idea that one of those men had a bounty hunter on his trail.

Bounty hunting was not the sort of life Jess Logan had expected after the war. He’d had a bit of luck and even earned a reputation, but his luck ran out in Missouri when he ran into the worst blizzard on record. So Logan took a job at the stage stop at Lakota Crossing to finish the out the winter there…and when the bandit gang began warring, Jess jumped straight into the action, regardless of the consequences….

Terrell L. Bowers starts this story by having Jess Logan help rescue a group of Indian women and children from freezing to death in one of the worst snowstorms in history. Logan is rewarded for his bravery by the band’s chief by being given a young woman to do with as he wishes. This leads to many humorous moments, as Logan sure doesn’t want to be responsible for Pale Flower. It seems the Indians are glad to be rid of her as she’s seen to be bad luck. As the story progresses Bowers begins to hint that Pale Flower may not be all she seems, and when she attacks a white man with a shovel more questions arise that help hook the reader into story.

There’s not a lot of gun-action in the first half of the book but this is were Bowers expertly pulls the reader into the story, introduces his cast of well-drawn characters and has you believing that Logan is more than a match for the outlaws. Unbeknown to both reader and hero the outlaws have an ace-in-the-hole that will prove to be a surprising problem that could easily see the outlaws steal the army payroll without any difficulty. The second half of the tale is nearly all action as the outlaws take over Lakota Crossing and their ambush is set.

Of course good triumphs over bad in the end as is the case in just about every BHW I’ve read, and here Terrell L. Bowers brings this about in a fast moving and entertaining tale – the first part of which is based around a true incident.

Ambush at Lakota Crossing has an official release date of the end of the month but is available now from a number of Internet bookstores.