Lead Law by the late British author John Russell Fearn (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia,
SFE) is his vintage standalone historical western action adventure novel, this one starring a rancher whose lands were set on fire by a stray locomotive spark which the railway company refuses to pay compensation for, and also finds himself framed by the company head for railway-related robbery and murder besides, as you do, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press' Pioneering imprint.
This was originally published in 1950 by Scion and was later reprinted by Robert Hale as part of their Black Horse Western line using the pseudonym Morton Boyce.
Currently free @
Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)
Description
Guilty until proven innocent…
Clyde Anderson is an angry man.
After Horace Summerville’s railway leads to a fire on Anderson’s land, he’s hell bent on revenge.
The railway company refuses to pay out any compensation and with his whole livelihood destroyed, Anderson faces ruin.
But angry or not, Anderson didn’t hold up the railway, steal the gold or shoot the sheriff, despite people claiming he did.
In order to prove his innocence Anderson will have to track down the real culprits and get them to confess.
Only the real culprit is Horace Summerville himself and with the sheriff dead and Anderson in jail, Summerville has nothing standing between himself and the gold.
Nothing, that is, except Anderson’s fire-cracker fiancée.
Framed for a robbery and murder that he didn’t commit, and with his fiancée’s life in danger, Clyde knows that only Lead Law will count for anything…