Trouble rides tall: Gloria Hogarty, the little tramp the town of Pony Wells never wanted, was dead. But Marshal Bry Shafter was out ot find her killer with or without the town's help. He had done what the town's boses had begged him (and paid him $10,000 a year) to do; he had cleared the gunslingers and bad women off the streets. Now the bosses ran their own houses of ill-fame and hired their own guns. Bry Shafter was no longer needed. Cross the red creek: Jim Gilmore is looking for a place to settle down, and decides that Kiowa, Wyoming is no worse than anywhere else. People will talk wherever you go. But trouble seems to follow Gilmore. Desert stake-out: Blade Merrick knew what to expect if the Apaches captured him. He already had a jagged scar from his neck to his waist to remember them by. And now he was facing them with no one at his side but the three cutthroats who had murdered his brother.