Ernest Haycox

Presents four interconnected stories of life in New Hope, a freighting town on the Missouri River in the Nebraska Territory.

On the trail of Theo McSween, the man who loved and then left his sister, Frank Goodnight rides into Sherman City, Wyoming, certain that McSween is hiding out with the Wild Bunch, a gang of outlaws.

Clay Morgan was a quiet man. A widower with a nine-year-old daughter, he kept pretty much to himself. But there was one man in the territory capable of rousing Morgan to a fury, Ben Herendeen. For years the two men had been bitter adversaries. Morgan had first fought Herendeen for Lila. Morgan won that battle and promptly married the pretty eighteen year old. Yet Morgan's and Herendeen's mutual disrespect did not die with Lila. Both men were ranchers....