Lockwood

Cuff Lockwood, the aging hero of this excellent new western from the veteran Paine (Tears of the Heart), just wants to live out his years in a place with less than two feet of snow on the ground during the winter. He keeps trying to make his way south to the New Mexico Territory, but everywhere he goes, folks cotton to him and try to get him to settle down. First there's pretty, young Shelly Harrison, with whom Lockwood shares a night by his campfire before he tips his hat and rides on. Then the townspeople of Derby, Wyo., try to draft him to replace their murdered marshal. Lockwood again demurs, but a slug in the leg hobbles him and involves him in an incipient range war. He takes a job as ramrod for Toby ""Lady"" Barlow and ends up staying many years beyond what he planned, even falling for the boss lady and marrying her. When recurring nightmares of a crying, pleading Shelly haunt him, however, he seeks her out, only to find something even more startling than what he had feared--a turn of events that will alter his life forever. The requisite gunplay and squinty heroics are here, but Paine's unexpected plotting and formidable descriptive ability elevate Lockwood's journey, which turns out to be not so much a trip to a specific place as a path to self-awareness. (Aug.)