Aristotle Scrimshaw had left his wife and children on their small farm in Wisconsin to pick up some cash in the bustling gold-fields of Virginia City. He had done well, buying up claims and collecting gold worth more than $100,000. Angelicas Ramirez had left her abusive husband to become the most prosperous madam in the territory. And Professor Randolph Figaro, a Mississippi gambler, had struck his own kind of paydirt in Virginia City as well--but now his luck has turned bad. When all three need to leave the encampment, they face a cold, bone-jarring stagecoach ride across the plains toward Salt Lake--a trail populated with ruthless road agents eager to plunder the wealth of the wary and unsuspecting alike. So when Scrimshaw plans a midnight run through the bandit-infested wilderness, he himself calls it a fool's coach.

"Fool's Coach" won the Spur Award for Best Western Novel of 1989.