A Town Called Temptation

Widower and rancher Ranson Nye stopped in Temptation, a "wide open" town on the Texas side of the Red River. He was headed to the Oklahoma Indian Territory to find a new wife and mother for his two children. Inside The Red Slipper saloon, he meets a young widow beginning her first day as a prostitute. On the spur of the moment, he asked Genoveve Van Dorn to be his wife with no intimacy involved. In desperation, she accepts his offer to keep from actually becoming a prostitute. However, within moments, there is a shooting in the saloon, and three men are killed — one of them the Town Marshal.

A trail robbery and multiple murders end up as the problem of Ranson Nye, town marshal of Temptation, Texas. This town built in the hopes of taking the last dollars from tired cowboys headed back home after cattle drives to Kansas is becoming more than it ever intended to be. When a newspaper comes to town, almost everything changes for this dusty little spot on the Red River across from The Indian Territory. When Mother Nature intervenes, tragedy brings out secrets and hidden talents. Add a Texas Ranger to the mix and we have Bad News in Temptation.

A town like Temptation with a town marshal like Ranson Nye tended to attract gunfighters. From the youngsters who thought themselves faster or better than the marshal to those who were trying to build a reputation — they all came to try their luck — even if it meant betting their lives on the outcome. Not all were truly bad men — however the times and the profession brought violence and death with it. This made a lawman’s task a chancy job never knowing which end of the bullet he might end up on.