The Penrock Covenant

It is a hot July day in 1883 when Travis Dabney sits peacefully on his porch watching the sun beat unrelentingly onto a vast stretch of New Mexico Territory. Then the stillness of the parched afternoon is broken by a mysterious stranger who comes into view.

Dabney gets his shotgun to prepare for the unexpected – and this stranger is definitely unexpected. Though the civil war has been over for nearly a generation, it is still unusual to see a black man riding with such confidence through these parts, only an hour’s ride outside Penrock, the town where Dabney was once a marshal and had to face down many men.

However, Dabney decides that this stranger, who calls himself Cassius Klay, means him no harm. The rider appears to have wandered onto the ranch as he is passing thru. Dabney discovers that Klay, who was a runaway slave before the war, is educated, quick with a smile and – like the former marshal – quick with a gun.

Though Klay sometimes has a coolness about him, the two men develop an unlikely friendship. They discover that they share a strong dislike for men who mistreat others, men like Rex Peacock who uses his money and power to buy the current law keepers of Penrock and who orders them to run the town the way he wants.

When Dabney and Klay find themselves in the middle of Penrock’s lawlessness, they team up to restore order and protect the townspeople, especially the women for whom they have developed special feelings. With an unspoken honor code between the two of them, their friendship appears to strengthen . . . yet an underlying mystery continues as to why Klay, a past gun-for-hire, chose to visit this town.