The Silver Bar mystery

"The Silver Bar mystery" by W. C. Tuttle is a Western mystery novel written in the early 20th century. Set on the Arizona border, it blends cow-town intrigue, rustling, and murder with a combustible family secret as drifters Goober Glendon and Johnny Wells cross paths with rancher Frank Austin, his hot-headed son Hal, and foreman Cal Sands. Expect gunplay, a stage hold-up, and a tangle of loyalties around the Star A ranch and the Mexican border town of Indian Wells. The opening of the novel follows Goober and Johnny into Silver Bar, where a drunken Hal Austin is blamed for killing cowboy Jigger Slade while Sheriff Nolan quickly calls it self-defence. Goober quietly lifts Hal’s revolver and discovers it hasn’t been fired, hinting at a frame-up, even as a midnight train brings the wealthy Austin family—and a brazen stage robbery that nets cash and two diamond rings. In Keno City, Sheriff La Plante and deputy Smoky Hill puzzle over the holdup, while Frank Austin hunts for Hal and confides in the capable but shadowy Sands. Down in Indian Wells, Hal proposes on impulse to Juana Diaz at the Casa del Diaz, unaware that her mother Rosita—once Austin’s wife—makes Juana his own daughter, a truth Austin later admits to Sands. Tensions spike when Sands tells Austin that witnesses claim Slade was shot in the back, sending Hal storming away. An inquest is quietly steered to a harmless verdict, Goober recognizes a local rancher as an old outlaw under a new name, and the Star A simmers with rustling troubles as Austin scrambles to spirit his wife and daughter out before the scandal and danger explode.

The Silver Bar mystery, by W. C. Tuttle. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78717.