The Widow's Valley

He made a valley of widows. She came to give it back its water. Schoolteacher Abigail Hart rides into Dry Fork, Arizona Territory, to claim the ranch her uncle left her — and walks straight into a war. The Hart place sits on the headwaters of Hart Creek, the spring-fed water every ranch in the valley below depends on, and cattle baron Silas Crane has spent three years buying, drying, and frightening his neighbors into selling so he can own that water outright and sell the whole valley to the railroad. Nobody in town will work for Abby — Crane has seen to that — except one man: Nate Vance, a drifting hired hand whose own family's place Crane dried up and swallowed. As Abby refuses every offer and outlasts every threat, the valley's scattered victims begin to stand with her: Clara Mercer, whose husband's murder Crane arranged and framed on an innocent man; Wade Mercer, riding back for the reckoning; and Marshal Eli Brandt, arriving with a dying man's sworn affidavit that can put Crane in a noose. When Crane moves in the dark to take the headwaters by force, he finds the whole valley standing in his way. The Widow's Valley closes the Dry Fork trilogy: the innocent man walks free, the baron's empire breaks, and Dry Fork's future belongs to Dry Fork.