Wild and Woolly

Bitter Creek, once a mud-splattered carnival of six-shooters and sin, has spent a decade corseted into starched collars, soda fountains, and pianolas; its boardwalks now echo with the hush of propriety rather than the thunder of hooves. When word arrives that effete Manhattan millionaire Jeff Hillington—nephew of the iron-fisted railroad baron who owns half the territory—yearns to taste the raw frontier his dime-novels mythologize, the town’s cash-strapped burghers confect a three-day masquerade of saloon brawls, stagecoach hold-ups, and fake Injun raids. They hire the local Blackfeet to whoop, grease the roulette wheels, uncork the rot-gut, and unbutton the dance-hall girls, all so the dude in the spotless buckskin can swagger, shoot blanks, and ride off convinced he has tamed the West. Yet the pageant spirals: a real outlaw gang hijacks the theatrical robbery, absconding with both the payroll and the banker’s audacious daughter, Molly. The dude must trade his rhinestone spurs for blood-stained steel, galloping into a moonlit arroyo where stage lights give way to starlit death. What begins as civic hucksterism becomes a crucible; the dude’s delusions are scorched away, the town’s sins are re-inscribed in dust, and the frontier—long since pronounced clinically dead—rears up like a grizzly, maw agape, to swallow everyone who dared embalm it as kitsch.