Release date is 2026-05-17

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The spark of Skeeter Bill by W. C. Tuttle is a Western novel written in the early 20th century. It follows lanky outlaw Skeeter Bill Sarg—a dry-witted gunman with a fierce honesty about truth—as he clashes with Sunbeam’s crime boss Tug Leeds, protects his ragged lawyer-partner Judge Tareyton, and throws his weight behind a newly arrived preacher and a brave young woman. Expect hardboiled action, sardonic humor, and a moral tug-of-war in a boomtown where vice runs the table.

The opening of the novel drops us into Sunbeam’s frenzy after a gold strike: Skeeter kills fast-drawing Jeff Billings in a fair draw, then refuses Tug Leeds’s demand to join and lie for his gang, earning a five-hour ultimatum to leave. Riding to preempt a planned horse theft at Poplar Springs, Skeeter arrives after a vicious storm and raid to find a caravan wrecked, with Rance Williams dead and only the Reverend Josiah Weston and Mary, his companion, alive; he helps them, buries the dead, and vows to back the minister’s plan to preach in Sunbeam. Back in town he lodges them with Mrs. Porter, floors Leeds with his fists after the boss assaults the judge, and is then unexpectedly tapped by local miners to lead a vigilance committee—just as Leeds buys into a claim and endorses the committee to shield himself. Skeeter weighs killing Leeds outright, while Leeds slyly poisons the minister and Mary against Skeeter and invites them to hold services in the Panhandle saloon, setting the stage for an explosive showdown. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: New York: The Ridgway Company, 1922