“ The Tears of Nephi” is a steampunk Porter Rockwell story, but I don’t think it quite works plotwise. Rockwell decides the problem just may be a sacred relic in the town’s mission Not that that protects them from rampaging insanity. He’s in Mexico to deliver a package, but – against warnings – he stops for the night at a town whose inhabitants lock themselves in every evening. “ Sundowners” has Rockwell far afield from his usual range. The story is based on a real historical event: a shooting competition between Rockwell (aka James Brown) in this California mining camp and a man named Stewart. Since it was written for an anthology of straight westerns, the weird elements of that novel are very obliquely allued to.

West puts introductory notes at the beginning of the stories, and the one for “ Bad Medicine” explains it serves as an epilogue for the Rockwell novel Let Sleeping Gods Lie. And the shadow of the Mountain Meadows Massacre on Rockwell’s reputation is also a factor

This one mostly plays out like a regular western with the introduction of a supernatural element fairly late. And Mormon piety and comradeship isn’t going to stop Carswell from hiring lots of gunfighters to get his way. The trouble is another man, Carswell, wants it to. His friend, Havenbrook, has actually found one of those lost Spanish gold mines that this series is so full of. Rockwell is summoned by a friend to get involved in a classic western conflict – a landwar. It’s something of a short novel taking up almost a third of the collection, and has lots of gunplay and death. Porter Rockwell is reunited with Roxy Lejune, Brigham Young’s headstrong, runaway daughter and her man, Quincy Cthubert Jackson as they travel to California after the events of You Only Hang Once. “ Helldorado” is a sequel to the first three novels of the Dark Trails Saga.

Clockwork Dolls by William Meikle