Bloody Joe Mannion

"Bloody" Joe Mannion is a town tamer of great renown. Known as the most uncompromising lawman on the Western frontier, he's been the town marshal of Del Norte in the Colorado Territory for the past five years. One day in Del Norte, he loses his famous temper and badly beats Whip Helton, the son of a prominent rancher. That night, the son and his outlaw pards burn Joe's house and kidnap and rape his daughter. Joe goes on the warpath, getting crossways with the son's father, prominent rancher Garth Helton.

Joe believes the old regulator, "Long-Shot" Hunter Drago, who did twelve years' hard time because of Mannion, has moved to the town of Del Norte, in the Colorado Territory to kill him. But nearly everyone else in town believes that he merely moved there to take over the Three-Legged Dog Saloon and to begin a new, peaceful life.

When Jeremiah Claggett, constable of the nearby ghost town of Fury, is murdered by Frank Lord, the kill-crazy leader of a dozen wild outlaws, Bloody Joe has to come to grips with the fact that he's inadvertently to blame. Mannion had turned Frank's brother, Billy, over to Claggett for safekeeping, setting off the chain of events that end his friend's life.

Del Norte Town Marshal "Bloody" Joe Mannion and his junior deputy, Henry "Stringbean" McCallister, run down an especially violent as well as beguiling outlaw in the pretty form of Mathilda Calderon. The senorita is just one pretty girl, but she fights like a leg-trapped puma, leaving Mannion with an arm full of buckshot and Stringbean hurting where a man just shouldn't be attacked, gallblastit!

When the big, savage bounty hunter, Ulysses Xavier Lodge comes to town wanting to spark one of Jane Ford's pretty doxies at the San Juan Saloon & Hotel, Jane and two bouncers give the bear-like giant the bum's rush. Incensed, Lodge returns to the parlor house and shoots Jane three times in the chest. Jane and Bloody Joe had been on the outs, their marriage dissolved, but now with Jane's life teetering on the edge, Joe realizes how much he really loves the pretty redhead and what a fool he was to let her go.

Town Marshal "Bloody" Joe Mannion and his close friend, Wells Fargo detective Flint Henry, are on the trail of some of the most vicious killers Mannion has ever faced. Flint is killed so it's up to Bloody Joe to single-handedly retrieve the loot the gang stole from a train. He manages to take down the gang and secure the loot only to find himself facing yet another band of vicious killers who want to lay their own grubby hands on the cash. Bloody Joe, however, has other ideas . . . and this ain't his first rodeo.

Matt Severance was accused of stealing a mine payroll with his older brother, Roy. Bloody Joe killed Roy, but the other rider got away. Folks believe Roy hid the money before he died, and they think Matt has returned to retrieve it though Matt insists he's only back to clear his name and to take over his dead father's ranch. Matt faces harassment from all sides, and its Mannion's job to keep the young man, whom he comes to like, alive and to retrieve the hidden loot.

As Bloody Joe Mannion transports the notorious prisoner Buzzard Lee through the rugged mountains of the New Mexico Territory, a chance encounter with a young woman shrouded in mystery thrusts him into a whirlwind of danger and intrigue. The woman has no recollection of her past, only vague memories of a harrowing escape through wind and rain.