Everyone knows that Salton's Sink is the driest patch of greasewood in the whole damned Colorado Desert. So when a slick land syndicate promises cheap water to a pack of greenhorn settlers, Stringer is more than a mite suspicious. One booze-thirsty engineer knows the truth about International Irrigation, but he's six feet under with a chest full of lead. Just a drunk's bad luck? Maybe, but Stringer's hanging on to his Winchester because in the Colorado Desert, the cheapest piece of land a man can buy is an unmarked grave.

Lou Cameron (1924-2010) was a prolific American novelist with over three hundred titles to his credit, from adventure, science fiction, crime, and war to movie novelizations, Westerns, and more. In addition to the Stringer Western series, he created the Longarm character, writing under the name Tabor Evans, as well as the Renegade series, writing as Ramsay Thorne. Cameron won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Novel in 1976, and he was also an accomplished comic book illustrator.