This was the climax; the end of a lifetime of bitterness and hate Rusty Maxwell and Ben Sharp, both grown old, grizzled, and rich; one the owner of a barbed-wire empire, a sea of grass larger than some Eastern states; the other risen to great political power, ruthlessly scheming to break the man with whom he had clashed ever since both had driven their longhorn herds over the trail to Dodge. To cut that empire in two, to bring its over-lord to his knees, had long been Ben Sharp s purpose. And in the South Western Pacific Railroad he found a weapon admirably forged to accomplish this end. But...

Reb Santee was his name. He appeared to be just a rough-and-tumble cowboy, with an unruly shock of flaxen hair, and a puckered frown in his laughing blue eyes. But when he first rode into Wind River Basin, the law already had a grudge against him and the grudges multiplied in a hurry, all because he wanted to be honest. In self-defense, he made a chain store business of outlawry. Brown s Park, over the line in Colorado; the Robbers Roost, down in the purple wastes of Utah; the Hole-in-the-Wall; the Lost Cabin wilderness he made them way stations on the outlaw trail, where men on the dodge...

Their cowboy days behind them though they d never get the cow smell out of their Levis and Pinkerton badges in their pockets, Bill Robuck, Happy Jack Dean, and Laughing Ed Leffler ride the owlhoot trails from Canada to Mexico, a collective scourge to desperadoes and rustlers. They live by the code "One for all and all for one" until they arrive in Flathead and a treacherous trail opens before them, proving to Robuck that even a partner can t be trusted. Robuck rides that trail to its last long mile, and transforms it to a trail of vengeance. His work done, embittered as only a man can be who...