Spur Award-Winning Author, winner of the 2007 Spur Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for The Horse Creek Incident.

"Dusty Richards writes with the flavor of the real West." —Elmer Kelton

IN 1880, ARIZONA TERRITORY WAS AN OUTLAW'S PARADISE.

The gunmen rode hard along the border, pillaging and murdering their way to plunder and wealth. Guided by a powerful landowner and his vicious outlaw captain, the Border Gang was organized, mean, and armed to the teeth. In Prescott, the governor knew Arizona's sheriffs couldn't stop the chaos—and statehood was in peril. Then a military man named Bowen stepped in with a plan: find a few good men, call them marshals, and send them after the Border Gang.

THEN THE LAW STRUCK BACK WITH A MAN NAMED MAYES.

Sam T. Mayes, a soldier turned Denver detective, is Bowen's first and only choice. Now Mayes—accompanied by an alcoholic army scout, a wanted man, and a fierce native woman—must ride against the cutthroat gang. Mayes' job is to put the kill­ers behind bars—or put them in the ground. His reward: the first-ever badge to be worn by a U.S. Territorial Marshal...

"Gritty, fast-paced...a classic Western." —W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, authors of People of the Mist on The Lawless Land