The Killing Strain — George G. Gilman

Trail’s End, it was called. Not the sort of place to end up: land abandoned, ownership obscure, farmstead falling down, no crops, no stock.But to Adam Steele it looked like it might be the road to the future. Spread out along the Californian foothills of the High Sierras, he could see it as a thriving horse ranch, and him thriving with it.But when he woke up to uninvited house guests standing over him, one covering him with a rifle and the other, the one with the baseball bat, aiming to turn Steele’s head into a Virginia hamburger, it was the present that was mostly on his mind.