FIVE STAR WESTERN NEWS:

Ride West to Dawn
James C. Work
0-7862-3264-1, Hardcover, 250 est. pages, November, 2001

Will Jenson is the first rider from the great Keystone Ranch to ride out into the mountains to investigate the irrigation problems homesteaders and ranchers are having, problems that have been brought to the attention of Art Pendragon, owner of the Keystone Ranch.

Time passes, and more time. Will locates parts of the great canals of the mysterious irrigation system that diverts all of the water from the mountain streams. And he is confronted by the silent giant who is known as The Guardian whose job it is to keep any and all trespassers away from these mountain fastnesses and the hidden valley. Will is disarmed and left afoot by the Guardian, allowed to take nothing but his clothes.

When Will finally makes it back to the Keystone Ranch, his memories are vague; he has been reduced physically and mentally by the strange ordeal he has undergone.

It is then that the one-eyed Kyle Owens is sent off on the same quest. He goes forewarned and forearmed against the adversities Will Jenson is able vaguely to remember. Only Kyle Owens does not return at all.

He, too, encounters The Guardian and is determined to overcome him in armed conflict. He also encounters the exotic Luna, who rides this area. Luna may protect him, but she also very well might prove to be his greater adversary, better armed and more capable, in her way, than the silent giant known as The Guardian. It is Luna who reveals to Kyle the way to the hidden valley, to the manor house in its center occupied by The Lady, but she does not divulge the secret of the gigantic system of waterways, or the meaning of it all.

James C. Work, whose Western stories weave such a terrific spell upon his many readers, does it again in his newest installment of the saga of the Keystone Ranch.