THE LAST MANHUNT

Texas ranchers set out to find a couple of murderous bushwhackers in this knotty Western adventure.

The final installment of Morris’ trilogy opens in 1885 with the 50-something ex–Texas Ranger Raifford MacReynolds and his stepson, Tom McKlarren, as comfortable, married ranch proprietors with past conflicts with Native Americans and cattle rustlers long behind them. However, Raifford’s past resurfaces when a couple of his cowhands are killed by prison escapees Bob Boudroux and Slade Pierce, who have old grudges against him. He and Tom saddle up once more for an epic trek to bring the perps to rough justice, equipped with a state-of-the-art arsenal that includes a Sharps Creedmoor rifle, Winchester ’76 Centennial repeaters, Greener 10-gauge shotguns, and miscellaneous revolvers. In previous outings (2010’s The Edge of Forever and 2017’s Reflections in a Distant Mirror), Raifford and Tom confronted the anarchic violence of the open frontier, but 19 years later, they traverse a tamer landscape where the range is fenced in and lawmen insist that criminals be tried. The pair pursue the escaped prisoners in saloons and brothels in towns ruled by corrupt officials; the villains leave a trail of hoofprints and dead bodies that leads into Comanche territory. There, the story gravitates to previous installments’ core elements: Comanche warriors, who now warily coexist with the main characters; long-range marksmanship; and nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse strategies. Morris offers his usual meticulously rendered action—“[Raifford] reached down and jerked his Winchester out of my hands, worked the lever, turned toward the rear, took aim, and fired three times in rapid succession at the trio behind us, who had already broken like a covey of quail”—and energetic prose that features sharply etched characters and punchy dialogue, as when Raifford notes, “The buffalo are gone; you can’t ride ten miles anymore without running into this godforsaken barbed wire.” The result is an acerbic elegy for the Old West with a larger-than-life protagonist.

An entertaining shoot’em-up whose heroes have to think as carefully as they aim.