Seventeen year old Annie and her 9 year old brother Tagg have spent the last two months on a wagon trip from the Midwest out to "Indian country" to live with their uncle, Sheriff Luke, in the town of Diablo.
Towards the end of their journey they stop at a stage to spend the night and overhear someone accusing the sheriff of being in cahoots with criminals. The man accusing this has just been the victim of a stagecoach robbery and claims a prominent citizen of Diablo told him the sheriff will not arrest these outlaws because he is crooked. Annie is shocked to hear this and worries if there could be some truth to it.
The next day as they are nearing their destination two outlaws, Rube and Rufe Horton, try to steal Annie's horse, Target. Annie is able to capture Rufe but Rube gets away and goes to the office of John Shanley, a wealthy business man who had hired the brothers to rob the stagecoach the previous night.
The robbery is one of many things Shanley is doing to try and make Sheriff Luke look like a corrupt and/or incompetent man and thus run him out of town. Luke and Shanley have been good friends but Shanley has committed a fraud by selling Luke's land in a newspaper advertisement in Boston, without Luke's knowing. The people who purchased it will be arriving in a few months to claim their land and Shanley needs to gain possession of it before then. Luke has refused to sell it at any price since he will now have Annie and Tagg living with him so Shanley has decided to get it by underhanded means.
Annie takes Rufe to her uncle who puts him in a cell. He doesn't remain there long however. Rube rides in that night and, under orders from Shanley, helps Rufe escape.
Meanwhile Shanley has called Dude Rango over from Jumpoff to discuss how to proceed with Luke. Rango advises murdering Luke and then forging IOUs on the land. But Shanley is hesitant to take things that far. He has ordered his spoiled 17-year-old daughter, Edith, home from her vacation from boarding school. He plans to have her act friendly with Annie and try to encourage Annie to want to move away.
Once Edith arrives Shanley throws a party in honor of Annie hoping he can spend the evening convincing Luke and Annie to let him send Annie to boarding school with Edith. This plan doesn't work as Annie is happy at the ranch. Edith also has requested Annie to wear a white dress to the party believing Annie has no fashion sense and hoping to humiliate her when she shows up in the wrong type of outfit. However Uncle Luke suggests Annie wear her mothers wedding dress which everyone at the party admires. This infuriates Edith.
Since his plan did not work Shanley has decided to go ahead with Rangos plan and murder the Sherrif. They concoct a plan that will get Luke and Rango out in an isolated spot outside town the next morning. Luke will not tell anyone where he is going but does tell Annie he might soon be able to buy her all the things she deserves.
Later that day as Annie and Tagg are coming home from a horse ride they spot Rufe Horton making a hasty exist from their house. Annie chases after him but after Rufe shoots at her she loses distance and he gets away. Back at the house the siblings find nothing missing but dirty boot prints show that Rufe had been in Uncle Luke's room.
Annie feels uneasy about uncle Luke's secretiveness so she goes into town to talk to Lofty about it. While she is in the sheriff office Rango comes riding into town with a slight flesh wound and says the sheriff had shot him. As the townspeople gather around Rango and Shanley, who has shown up, tell their story. They claim Rango was transporting $20,000 for Mr. Shanley and Luke had insisted he go along to guard Rango but once they were out in a desolate area Luke and his gang of outlaws attacked Rango, stole the money, and have ran off.
Some people in the crowd believe the story immediately due to Shanley's secret campaign against Luke. But others are hesitant to believe the word of a strange against a well known citizen. Annie, of course, does not believe it and goes along with a posse to view the crime scene. There she notes some strange things such as her uncles horses tracks disappearing suddenly. If he had ran off after getting the money there would be a trail.
Seeing Annie's suspicion Rango claims there's probably evidence at Luke's homes so Annie invites the posse back there to search. In Luke's wardrobe they find a bag from a recent bank heist. Annie and Tagg realize that Rufe had planted it but the men in the posse accuse the two Oakleys of trying to cover for their Uncle. A warrant for grand larceny and attempted murder is made out for the Sherrif and Shanley insists Annie and Tagg come stay with him instead of remaining alone at the ranch. Annie plans on talking to Shanley about Rango credibility that night at dinner but Rango turns out to be a dinner guest. After the meal him and Shanley go into the library so Rango can finally tell Shanley what really happened to the sheriff;
Once Luke and Rango were out of town Rube and Rufe Horton had been laying in wait to shoot Luke from a distance. However their shot missed and Luke immediately started racing towards them. That's when Rango shot Luke in the back. Luke fell off his horse and rolled over a cliff with a 200 foot drop.
Shanley then has Rango appear to leave for the night but really he is to wait outside by the barn so he can come back later to work on some forged notes that would entitle Shanley to Luke's ranch.
After a small altercation between Rango and the Oakley's Annie speaks with Shanley, says she doesn't trust Rango, and shares her plans to go to Jumpoff the next morning and make inquires about him. This worries Shanley so he and Rango spend the night forging a letter from Luke admitting guilt to stealing $20,000 from Rango, commiting other robberies, and being head of a gang. The letter also instructs Annie to sign over his ranch to Shanley and ship Annie and Tagg "back to where they came from". The letter is then wrapped around a rock which Rango throws through Shanley's library window.
The crash causes Annie to come running and although she still thinks something strange is going on she feels there's too much circumstantial evidence to be able to keep arguing with everyone's belief that Luke is a criminal. She agrees to sign the ranch over to Shanley who will have the papers drawn up the next day.
In the morning Annie and Tagg are given rude treatment by the Shanley's servants because of Luke's current reputation. They decide to go back home to the ranch and get packed to leave Diablo.
Once there a wagon pulls up with an elderly couple named Brewster. They've stopped to ask directions and spend some time chatting with Annie and Tagg. They say they've bought some land from Mr. Shanley and have come all the way from the east. They say Shanley had instructed them not to come for several months due to the desert heat but they couldn't wait as they were coming west to help with the husbands medical condition. They show Annie the map with their land and Annie shocked to see it is actually a part of Uncle Luke's ranch.
Annie decides to go talk to Shanley about this but she finds he still hasn't arrived home so she waits in the library. She ends up accidentally kicking over the wastepaper basket and finds a paper that Rango had used to practice forging Luke's handwriting on. Everything becomes clear to Annie, then Edith barges in. She accuses Annie of snooping, rips the paper out of her hand, runs upstairs and throws it in her bedroom fireplace, then locks Annie in her room. Annie is able to climb out the window by tying Edith's bed sheets together and using it as a rope. Once off the Shanley's property she tells Tagg to go inform Lofty of the situation and have him round up a posse to go look for Uncle Luke. She herself is going straight to the crime scene to try and find him.
Meanwhile Shanley and Rango have been congratulating themselves on a job well done when Rube Horton knocks on the back door and tells them they can't find Luke's body and that he's clearly still alive. The men head out to go look for him, stopping on the way at Shanley's house where Edith informs them what has happened.
Meanwhile Annie has arrived at the scene and sees Rube Horton show up and tell his brother Shanley and Rango are coming to help them look. Annie silently follows them down a trail leading over the cliff and is able to pick up her uncle's trail.
As she's nearing a large hill covered in boulders and rumble she trips, falls, and lets out an exclamation of pain which echoes all around. Uncle Luke, who is hiding in a well camouflaged abandoned mine shaft, hears and calls Annie to him. As she is telling him about the four men on their way to gun him down one of the Norton's appears in the entrance with a gun on them.
Annie is able to kick dirt in his face while uncle Luke clubs him with Annie's rifle. Shanley and Rango arrive just as this has happened and Annie is able to keep them back with her sharpshooting while her and Luke plan an escape through the mine's air-duct. They climb up the narrow opening and on to the hilltop just as they see Lofty and Tagg arriving alone. They evidently couldn't get up a posse and now they're about to walk into gunfire.
Thinking fast Annie takes aim at some boulders just as the four men bum-rush into the tunnel. This blocks the entrance and with the air duct entrance also now blocked they head back to town.
Shanley goes to prison after Rango testifies against him in exchange for a lighter sentence. His house and all it's belongings are auctioned off to pay back the peoples who's money he had fraudulently took. The Brewster's purchase the large house and turn it into a boarding house. Luke is re-elected Sherrif and Annie and Tagg settle into their new home.
- My favorite parts of these books are Annie's sharpshooting. She shoots a gun out of a mans hand twice and the heel off a mans boot.
- I'm not sure Luke or Lofty should be working in law enforcement. Even though they're being set up they still kind of suck at their jobs. Luke complains there's too much crime happening at once for them to catch it but he doesn't bother to enlarge the police force to more than him and Lofty, even though the Governor has encouraged him to deputize more people.
- There's an error on page 231. The town of Jumpoff is called Diablo.
- When Annie smells cigarette smoke by the Shanley's barn she thinks of Rango because he's the only one in Diablo who smokes cigarettes. But the next day when she sees the burnt out cigarettes by the barn ground she can't recall who she remembers smokes cigarettes.
When compared to the last Annie Oakley book I read, Double Trouble, I would say this one is better in terms of story telling and action which surprised me because the last time I read these books I thought Double Trouble was far superior.
However a problem I've had with this book both times I've read it is the fact that we, the reader, are aware of the situation going on from the start but are helpless to watch Annie fall right into this trap. It's very frustrating and little stressful, I actually had to put the book down several times because of it.
But that is just a personal problem and without that the book is actually quite good.
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