A stranger named Dunbar comes to the town of Dry Camp and goes to work at Rich Stanton s ranch. Shortly after Dunbar s arrival, he helps find the body of an old man named Ross Guilford. The foreman, Paul Kelso, picks a fight with a ranch hand named Willard Brumley. Dunbar intervenes, and Kelso fires him. As Dunbar asks around, he learns from Jack Brumley, Willard s father, that Guilford knew something about Brumley s wife, Louise, a beautiful woman of color who disappeared twenty years earlier. Stanton hires a man named Holcomb, who pairs up with Kelso to provoke Willard into a fatal...

A Booklist Best Mystery 2016

Tommy Reeves and his pal Red Armstrong make friends with the Mexican people who live near the ranch where Tommy and Red work. The boys take an interest in the Mexican girls, and their foreman tells them to stay away. When he boys do not heed the warning, they get fired. When they go to visit the Mexican people again, they find out that Vinch Cushman, their recent employer, is trying to force the Mexican people to leave their houses and land behind.

In order to drive the Mexicans away, Cushman has a crew of men dam up a creek and cut off...