Marshal Mart Duggan

In 1860 gold is discovered in Colorado, then silver in 1876. By 1878, the frontier settlement of Leadville, Colorado is becoming the richest and wildest of America’s boomtowns. Newspapers across the nation spread the word of the new gold and silver discoveries. Soon the settlement grows from five hundred inhabitants to thirty thousand. New mines are built. Hundreds of tons of carbonate ore hauled to smelters. Pine trees cut, and cabins and stores built as merchants come with their goods looking to capitalize on this new free-spending market. Investors from the East build smelting factories and buy shares in the mines. Over a hundred saloons, gambling houses, variety theatres, and dance halls spring up. They’re all catering to the miners, roughs, and tourists with an abundance of beer, liquor, and whores. Leadville is known for its instant wealth, gambling, depravity, and MARSHAL MARTIN DUGGAN. The mayor and town council need a firm marshal, a man to tame their out-of-control town that’s in the hands of the bad element. Thieves, con men claim jumpers, footpads, and murderers are infesting this fast-growing boomtown. Lawmen unable to stand up to the lawless are being shot or run out of town. MAYOR HORACE TABOR selects Deputy Martin Duggan, a mean, tough, no-nonsense man, who’s equally good with his fists and a gun, as the new marshal. Marshal Duggan proves to be a match for the roughs and unruly miners. With an iron hand and loyal deputies, he begins to gain ground against the culprits in a short time. Men like Horace Tabor, MARSHALL FIELD, DAVID MAY, MEYER GUGGENHEIM, and others become millionaires. But many men and women are dying - in the mines, on the streets, or in Stillborn Alley of starvation, drunkenness, pneumonia, childbirth, or murder. DESTINY McCUE and her brother QUINT McCUE arrived in Leadville to put on rope and shooting exhibitions. They’re also looking for the three CURLOU brothers who, years earlier, murdered their parents. Marshal Duggan is smitten by the beautiful Destiny, as she is by him. They become lovers, and the marshal aids Quint and Destiny in finding the three Curlou’s. There’s a showdown. Destiny and Quint’s fast draw bring the demise of the Curlou brothers.