Appaloosa (novel)

Appaloosa (2005) is a novel set in the American Old West written by Robert B. Parker. A film of the same name based on the novel was released in 2008. Parker published a sequel, Resolution, in June 2008 and a third novel featuring the characters of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, Brimstone, in May 2009. A fourth and final book in the series - Blue-Eyed Devil - was published in 2010 shortly before Parker's death.

From the book sleeve:

When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of a renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary – one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.