Cross of Gold
Champlin understands horses, guns, and the treacherous desert as well as anyone, but he never writes a traditional western. He writes adventure stories full of action and plot twists. Cross of Gold features a hard-luck, part-time lawman, Marc Charvein, who takes a job from a mine owner, Ezra Pitney, to find stolen gold. He finds it in a Nevada ghost town under a dynamited church, drives off the bad guys with the help of an old prospector, and rescues a young woman, Lucy Barkley. Thinking all is under control, Charvein draws his hard-won pay and strikes out for Arizona, where he hopes to rest through a warm winter. Meanwhile, Lucy enlists the help of an unscrupulous gambler and wrests the gold from the church. The two barely escape ahead of Pitney, who, thinking he’s been doublecrossed, angrily dispatches a gunman after Charvein. All parties converge near Yuma in a hair-raising climax on a California-bound train right out of a 1950s B western. Everything turns on coincidence, but somehow Champlin pulls it off, leaving the reader wanting more. --John Mort