"Owen Conagher was ambushed as he rode through the town of Bitter Creek in the evening darkness. Wounded in the initial attack, he became the target for a group of vigilantes so crazed for blood that they never suspected that their target was the wrong man"--
For newlyweds Jaine and Ter Bryant the long, tiring journey across the prairie from their comfortable home in Natchez was a small price to pay for the new life they hoped to find in the promised land of California. But the dream became a nightmare when their wagon train was attacked by a Comanche war party whose chief carried Jaine off to be his second wife.
When young Buck Trager rode into Midastown, it wasn't a cowhand's joy ride. He'd waited eight long years to find the men who'd gunned down his family in a fight over hidden gold. Now he'd found them and it was time for his revenge.
It was a strange mission -- to find, dead or alive, the notorious Indian Chief White Wolf. It was an even stranger search party, headed by an impressive, grandly outfitted promoter, escorted by a troop of U.S. Cavalry, and including a vicious card sharp with a game as deadly as his gun and a down-on-his-luck cowboy whose try for a $500 reward leads down a trail where treachery, betrayal, and death lurk at every bend.
On the trail of on one the men who had raped and murdered his wife, Cullom Blaine comes to Antelope Valley and finds himself in the middle of a range war. He declines to join up with either side, but finds himself caught up in the enmity and killing none less.