Ambush (Dan Ballantine Mysteries)

By Mark Travis

In the fall of 1861, 18-year-old Pony Express rider Jedidiah Burns saddles up and leaves the Maverick Springs Station headed east toward the Butte Station twelve miles away. Though he does not know it, his mochila contains $20,000 in Comstock Silver Mine bearer bonds and $5000 in Pony Express stamps. Outlaw Jesse Nedlander and his gang, aware of Jed's cargo, ambush him at the Butte Mountains pass. With a bullet in his chest, Jed rides a mile before he stops his horse, takes his mochila and his canteen, and hurries into a narrow gulch to stop the blood pumping from his wound. When he is found nearly dead two days later, he does not have his mochila. 103-year-old Virgil Burns, Jed's great grandson, tells Jed's story to a dozen older men including Dan Ballantine's retired friend, Horatio, and a younger visitor, Francis 'Sonny' Lemley. Soon Horatio calls Dan and suggests they take their dual-purpose motorcycles to a lonely part of the Nevada desert to ride the Pony Express Trail and search for Jed's mochila. Sonny, a week out of Nevada state prison after serving four years for burglary, steals a motorhome from a storage lot and collects his former cellmate, Norman 'Badman' Badham, who recently completed a 15-year sentence for second degree murder. Badman kidnaps a young woman for cooking and sex duties and takes her with them to Butte Valley. Careless target shooting results in a confrontation between the motorcyclists and the ex-convicts during which the young woman secretly sends Dan a signal for help. Out of cell phone range and fearing for the woman's safety, Horatio and Dan plan a rescue which puts everyone's life in jeopardy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1483900223
• ISBN13: 9781483900223
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"