The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary

Try the first book in this Stringbean Hooper Western Series. You will never find another sheriff like Stringbean Hooper. His description of the sheriff's job in Sully Town, Montana is relaxing with his feet on his desk while he watches the town's citizens ride by. That all changes when the doctor's wife disapears. Hooper finds himself in a murder investigation, bushwhacked, threatened and in the middle of a family feud between cattle barron Mac Sullivan, the missing woman's father, and his son-in-law, Doctor Strummer. Hooper's only help is a nervous, part time deputy/pig farmer, Whiskers Parker, and the gun toting woman owner of the Rocking T ranch, Theodosia Sheffield. Stringbean is dead set against a woman helping him in the middle of a gun battle. Especially this one. She is set on marrying Strinbean if she can catch him. So he finds himself fighting for his life and his bachelorhood while he tries to solve the mysterious disappearance of Mary Alice Strummer.