The Loaded Door

A laconic cowboy, Bert Lyons, strides back across the sun-scorched horizon of the Grainger spread only to discover the world he once knew has curdled into a narcotic-tinged nightmare; the patriarch lies murdered, the deed has passed into the talon-like grip of Stan Calvert—a dapper drug-runner whose silk necktie is stained with moral venom—and the black-hatted rustler Blackie Lopez, a panther in human hide, now circles Molly Grainger, Bert’s once-and-future beloved. Embroiled in a lattice of smuggling trails, rustled cattle, and false murder charges against Molly’s brother Joe, Bert dons the mask of the reckless drifter while secretly unpicking the gang’s barbed scheme. He baits the villains with a feigned naïveté, stage-manages a midnight stampede as brassy as a trumpet solo, and lunges through a barn-storming rescue when Blackie kidnaps Molly beneath a moon bruised purple with menace. In a cathartic harrow of fists, hoof-beats, and six-gun thunder, Bert strong-arms the syndicate into sheriff’s irons, exonerates the hapless Joe, and reclaims both ranch and romance under the vast, indifferent sky.