The Coniacker and the Gunslinger: Counterfeiting and Murder in The Arizona Territory

THE CONIACKER AND THE GUNSLINGER

Counterfeit and Murder in the Arizona Territory

For some, the Arizona territory of 1885 is still a golden opportunity to ply their illegal enterprises. Some live by the gun, others by special talents. The territory is no place for a bookish tenderfoot like Burleigh Williams who has spent his life in the cities of Boston and Washington, D.C. In an unexpected twist of fate, Williams finds himself partnered with a gunslinging killer, Clifton Anthonio Chabio. Together they made a team intending to make a fortune in counterfeit money.

Burleigh Willlams, a currency plate maker at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing secretly makes plates that he plans to use for himself. He is arrested in Arizona Territory for making counterfeit currency. and sentenced to the Yuma Territorial Prison where he is a cellmate with a sociopathic gunslinger killer serving time for murder. With their four other cell mates they escape through an ingenious method. Their plan is to establish a counterfeiting scheme near the city of Nogales. But the coniacker (counterfeiter) and gunslinger did not reckon with the long reach of the law with its elite operatives of the United States Secret Service and the territorial Arizona Rangers