Left For Dead (Hahmood The Killer Book 1)

Outgunned, Hunted, and Left for Dead

When gunslinger Hahmood rides into Wilmington, he expects a quick job: recover stolen railroad shares for a wealthy widow and ride off with a fat payday. But in the lawless stretches of the Oklahoma Territories, even the simplest job can turn deadly.

Faced with local enforcers, a ruthless posse, and a tangled web of betrayals, Hahmood is forced to team up with a fellow outlaw just to stay alive. Every step forward pulls him deeper into violence—and closer to proving why his name carries fear across the West.

LEFT FOR DEAD kicks off the Hahmood The Killer series with fast-paced action, sharp characters, and the gritty realism of a classic Western.

Start the journey with Left for Dead—where justice comes at the barrel of a gun.

Excerpt from the book

It was a good day out for families, friends and anyone who happened to be passing by. Judge Milburn stood, top hat slightly askew, tailcoat open to display his brand new scarlet waistcoat, gold chain stretched across his ample paunch. He struck an impressive sight and townspeople felt confident they had in Milburn a man who meant business. Keyhole was once a dangerous and lawless place. Wives lived in dread of their husbands not returning home on a Saturday night, parents prayed their adolescent children would not fall into the clutches of some evil gang. It had taken a long time to tame it. Sheriff Halliday and Judge Milburn ran troublemakers out of town and arrested anyone who decided they wanted to stand up to the law. On this particular morning, with the church choir singing so plaintively, everyone had come out to watch Bart Taylor breathing his last, his neck stretched, his voice forever silenced.

They caught Taylor the afternoon he and his two friends, the brothers Henry and Bartholomew Winkleton, robbed the haberdashery store over on Regent Street, one of the two main thoroughfares that cut through Keyhole. They chose to rob the haberdashery as the bank was closed that day. Painters were inside, redecorating the old place, and it was full of noise. Taylor, beside himself with rage, stomped off to the haberdashery store with the brothers in tow. “I’ll not leave this place empty-handed,” he declared, and burst through the door with his Colt Paterson in hand.

A couple of customers, milling about, talking in low whispers, looked up startled as Taylor strode in. Behind the counter, the owner looked up, immediately sensed the threat and threw up his arms, the terror etched into every feature of his face.

Taylor shot the owner, Bertrand Hollis, through the heart without so much as a thought. Before the poor man had breathed away his life, Taylor vaulted the counter and tore open the till. Hollis’s wife, Noreen, came through the back door and screamed. Taylor, jumping backwards in shock, spilt the bundle of dollar bills onto the floor. He cursed and went to pick them up. Noreen hit him across the head with a large spade. By the time he regained consciousness, Taylor was in the town jail’s cell. His first question when he sat up was, “Where are my boys?”

His ‘boys’ had panicked after Taylor went down. They returned to the street, yelping and firing in the air, both of them wild-eyed and terrified. Young and inexperienced in their chosen lifestyle of crime and violence, Henry only just seventeen with Bartholomew a mere fifteen years of age, neither thought things through particularly intelligently. Aroused by the gunfire, Sheriff Halliday came out of his office, Winchester in hand. He summed up the situation almost immediately. He shot Bartholomew first, hitting the younger brother in the chest. Gasping, Bartholomew crumpled up, clutching at the wound and bleating, “Oh Henry, they done killed me, Henry!” Halliday ended the young man’s life with another bullet straight through the top of his head.