Maintaining order in a cow town, veteran Marshal Aaron McLean takes on more than he bargains for. Lyle Cameron is the most ruthless, the most powerful, rancher in the territory. His feckless son is guilty of murdering the local undertaker. Marshal McLean knows that it is his duty to bring the killer in, but this will mean challenging the formidable Lyle Cameron. To make matters worse, the local community is stirred into civil strife over scandalous events at the saloon, Porky’s Pride. The arrival of a travelling circus further aggravates the situation with a bizarre crime.

Emotions are running high, the threat of lynch-law, and worse, abounds and Lyle Cameron leads his hoodlum cowboys into town to take the law into their own hands. But Marshal McLean has other ideas. Desperately outnumbered, can he and his wounded deputy restore peace? 

Excerpt
The piebald mare was a hell-fire nag. She’d try to corner you in her stall, so that she could bite and kick. Her usual greeting was to flatten her ears back and bare her teeth, with the whites of her caustic eyes showing. She would buck and pitch like a half-broken bronc with veins full of snake-blood, and often Aaron would leave her standing saddled, letting her ‘soak’ for a while, before he took her out. He dreaded the day when she learned roll-overs. She was aptly named ‘Mockey’.
Folks had asked Aaron so many times why he kept her. He’d tell them that for some crazy reason he was attached to her because she reminded him of Hilda, although he couldn’t point to exactly how - unless it was the way the mare curled her lip and snarled. Or maybe it was because he couldn’t tell which was uglier: her front or rear end. He’d had the same problem with Hilda.
Anyway, by ten o’clock next morning he’d shucked off his blankets, saddled and cinched-up the piebald and he and Gregg Mason were setting out for The Golden Rooster. Aaron as if he were a damned Apache with the bandage wound about his head like a turban. It made his hat perch high on his pate. His headache was akin to a hangover, in which he was well experienced. Both men packed artillery, though as usual Aaron hoped he wouldn’t have to use his Colt, because his trigger finger had stiffened of late with rheumatism. In the old days, mind you, he’d been pretty handy when it came to gunplay.