US Marshal Piedmont Kelly shackles a stranger to a tree for the night after the man rides into his camp and tries to kill him. When dawn arrives, Kelly finds the man murdered in his sleep. Confused and worried, the marshal sets out to back track the man in hopes of catching his killer. Along the way, he comes across a wounded Chiricahua Apache who has been shot during an attempted massacre of several of his people. After patching the Indian’s wounds, the marshal finds that the Indian is a suspect in the robbery of a stagecoach and the killing of a driver, guard and passengers. Feeling strongly that the Indian is innocent, the marshal discovers that the man murdered in his camp holds the key to a highly unlikely band of killers. Phil Dunlap delivers another fast-paced, action-packed western.
Phil Dunlap has had a lifelong affair with the history and characters of the Old West. Often drawn to a haunted land where ghosts of gunfighters, scalawags, gamblers, dance hall girls, and victims of gold fevers still float among the cacti, he revels in revisiting that bygone era as a novelist, the next best thing to living it. Phil lives near Indianapolis with his wife Judy.