Dying Ways — John J. McLaglen

The words were indistinct and came with longer and longer gaps between them. Herne was forced to kneel beside the man and bend his head sideways so that his ear was no more than inches above the man's mouth.
“Edwards … Jamie Edwards … prospectin' off and on for thirty years … hills around … made strike … Fallen Lake … couple of thousand dollars … silver ore. Tell my wife Nadine … Cimaron Falls. Promise me.”
Still Herne hesitated. How many old man had he run into who'd wasted their last years, their dying words over delusions of silver mines and buried ore?
But Herne agreed reluctantly to the old prospector's last request and rode into Cimaron Falls in search of the beautiful, wanton Nadine. But what he didn't know was that Jamie Edwards was murdered a brutal gang of train robbers �" Zac Peters, P. J. Armitage, Savannah, Tex Blakely and their leader, Waco Johnny Young �" a gang who would stop at nothing to lay their hands on the silver …

John J. McLaglen is the pseudonym for the writing team of Laurence James and John Harvey.

Laurence James began his writing career in 1974 when he published his first novel in the science-fiction series SIMON RACK: EARTH LIES SLEEPING. He worked in publishing for ten years off and on till about 1970, when he went to “New English Library and ran the editorial side of NEL for three years.” In addition, around 1974, James published the fantasy saga of Hells Angels in England & Wales in the early 1990s under the name Mick Norman.

While the name of Laurence James is not synonymous with Westerns, those of John J. McLaglen, William M. James and James W. Marvin, to name but a few, are.

John Harvey, a former English and drama school teacher began his contribution to the Herne the Hunter series with the second book, River of Blood. “In the Western,” says John, “I'm interested in finding a balance between the myth of the West (as it comes through American literature and film) and the historical reality. Increasingly, I'm concerned to attempt to make a stronger place for women in the Western, which is traditionally a refuge of masculinity and male fantasy.”