Devil's Legend — Marshall Grover

INTO ORTEGA VALLEY HE RODE ... TO BECOME A TARGET!
Like a black cloud, the threat of sudden death hung over Ortega, implacable; malevolent; ominous. The distraught mother of an executed killer had put a curse on the jury that convicted him. All twelve would die, she vowed.
Three had already died, when Big Jim Rand arrived, tagged by the insolent, itchy-fingered Benito Espina. Was the curse working? The tough ex-sergeant of the 11th Cavalry refused to believe in witchcraft. With no regard for the danger that threatened him, he stayed to challenge a cunning conspiracy to fight and win in a conflict of hard fists and blazing .45s.


Leonard Frank Meares (February 13, 1921 - February 4, 1993)
Sydney born Len Meares aka Marshall Grover, published around 750 novels, mostly westerns. His best-known works feature Texas trouble-shooters Larry and Stretch. Before starting to write, Meares served in the Royal Australian Air Force, worked in the Department of Immigration and sold shoes. In the mid-1950s he bought a typewriter to write radio and film scripts. Inspired by the success of local paperback westerns, he wrote Trouble Town, which was published by the Cleveland Publishing Company in 1955.
His tenth yarn, Drift! (1956), introduced Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson. In 1960, he created a brief but memorable series of westerns set in and around the town of Bleak Creek. Four years later came The Night McLennan Died, the first of more than 70 westerns (sometimes called oaters) to feature cavalryman-turned-manhunter Big Jim Rand.