The Silent Gun (1993)

Douglas Hirt's Western, published by Dell in 1993, brings Thomas Langely down from Miles City, Montana, to Esteros Creek, a river town in the New Mexico Territory where there is talk of the railroad coming through. Meaning to leave his past behind, he packs his worn Colt into his saddlebags before riding in and signs the hotel register as Thomas Bracken, a would-be storekeeper. (Open Library)

Watches

Elgin watch: Waiting at the empty desk of the Montgomery Hotel, where a tall floor clock stands stopped at a quarter past three, Langely checks the Elgin in his pocket: six o'clock, and the desert heat still too much for a man used to northern ranges. Late in the novel he saddles his horse and checks the Elgin in his vest pocket again, twelve twenty, before riding down the mountain trail. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: A tall floor clock stood silently alongside the stairs, its pendulum motionless; time suspended at quarter past three. Langely checked the Elgin watch in his pocket. Six o’clock, and the oppressive desert heat was still nearly too much for a man used to more northern ranges to endure. (Douglas Hirt, The Silent Gun, scan cataloged as Dell, 1993, pp. 4 to 5, where the sentence runs across the page break and a stray OCR character is dropped; he checks "the Elgin in his vest pocket" again on p. 186; Internet Archive scan OCR)