After all the trails they'd followed, and all the times they'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder against one bad man or another, the time had finally come for Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos to ride their separate ways. And though they had never really gotten along too well, each man felt a sense of loss at the prospect.
But Benedict had met and fallen in love with the beautiful Charity Flint. The couple were about to go back East and get married.
Then Colonel Oliver Traven, an old friend of Benedict's, asked for his help. Traven's son Mark had gone missing three years earlier in the parched lands of the Llano Estacado ? the Staked Plains. Traven wanted to make one last search for his son ? or his son's body ? before he gave up hope completely of ever seeing him again.
Benedict couldn't refuse the man ... and before long he and Brazos were up to their shell belts in trouble. But the outcome of their search was to hold a terrible sting in the tail ... for all of them.