The Girl Angle

Summary

A jilted bride, Maud Wainwright, drags her crinoline into the Mojave dust and builds a citadel of thorns, vowing never again to trust the masculine silhouette; yet the desert’s amber silence is broken by two rival alphas—Three Gun Smith, a laconic outlaw whose revolvers click like metronomes, and Sheriff Steve Kennedy, whose badge glints with church-window sanctimony. After renegade dynamite topples her adobe refuge, the bandit’s gang ferries the furious spinster to Smith’s cedar-roofed hideout where, amid gun-oil and ledger ink, she unearths a U.S. mail pouch and smells federal treachery. Convinced she has cornered a thief, she gallops to Kennedy, little suspecting the star on his chest is tin-plated; together they ambush Smith, shackle him, and prepare a vigilante barbecue. Only when she rifles through oilskin documents does the cosmic joke invert: Smith is a Secret Service bloodhound, Kennedy a rustler of both cattle and truth. A midnight sidesaddle dash, a rope already creaking under the gallows tree, and Maud—petticoat flaring like a comet—cuts the noose, kisses the supposed villain, and rewrites her own mythology from man-hater to myth-maker.

Synopsis

Jilted on her wedding day, Maud Wainwright becomes a confirmed man-hater. Homesteading in the Southwest, she ignores the attentions of both bandit "Three Gun Smith" and Sheriff Steve Kennedy. When Smith's gang accidentally knocks over Maud's cabin, the men take her to Smith's cabin while they rebuild her dwelling. There, Maud discovers a mail pouch and believing that it was stolen by Smith, reports him to the sheriff, who persuades her to assist him in arresting the bandit. After Smith is captured, Maud discovers papers that prove he is actually a secret service agent and that the sheriff is the real bandit. Riding to Smith's rescue, Maud prevents him from being lynched at the hands of vigilantes and then proclaims her love for him.