Saul Chadron's plan to hire Mark Thorn to kill the rustler, Alan MacDonald, goes awry with his own daughter falling for his enemy. On the top of it, he couldn't have anticipated the huge backlash the rustlers would put up against him and his mighty band of settlers. Who will have the last word or say the last bullet? Excerpt: "When a man came down out of the mountains looking dusty and gaunt as the stranger did, there was no marvel in the matter of his eating five cans of cove oysters. The one unaccountable thing about it was that Saul Chadron, president of the Drovers' Association, should sit there at the table and urge the lank, lean starveling to go his limit. Usually Saul Chadron was a man who picked his companions, and was a particular hand at the choosing. He could afford to do that, being of the earth's exalted in the Northwest, where people came to him and put down their tribute at his feet..."