A New York Times Bestselling AuthorA Spur Award-winning AuthorThe bank's been robbed two men are dead and there's a reward on the head of a mountain man called Kriker. Leo Guild is just as eager as anyone to collect the bounty. But he also knows - from personal experience - the law's been wrong before. He wants to hear Kriker's side of the story. So he sets off through the icy wilderness to track his quarry - and soon realizes that in this case the law and the truth are not on the same side.



Leo Guild, sometime bounty hunter, has spent the previous three weeks riding shotgun for one of the last stage lines remaining in the Midwest. But jobs were few and far between and Guild was nearly broke.

So it was foolish for Guild to contemplate refusing the simple job he's asked to take—finding a missing prizefighter. Guild had always hated boxing; he considered it primitive and repellant. Now he finds himself taking an even more intense dislike to John T. Stoddard, the boxing promoter who wants to hire him. Still, the money is good for a few hours' work, and Guild decides to take the job.

Guild quickly finds the fighter holed up in the home of his Mexican girlfriend, but the fighter has some grievances with Stoddard and he takes them out on Guild. After getting soundly beaten by the angry fighter, Guild should have called it a day. He never anticipated the trouble he signed up for when he foolishly agreed to guard the fighter and the purse.



Leo Guild didn't figure on running into his former wife Sarah again. Years earlier she'd left him for a gunfighter named Frank Evans. Guild is putting up in a river town, and hears Sarah is staying in a local hotel—she's been looking for him. Leo's heart soars, until she tells him that Frank Evans has left her for a younger woman, Beth. Unfortunately for Frank, Beth's former lover is also a gunfighter who has sworn to kill Evans.

Sarah has forgiven Frank, and she wants Guild to broker a peace between the gunfighters so Frank can return to her, unharmed.

At the same time, a rich man named Adair has caught wind of the conflict and he invites both gunfighters to his ranch for a birthday celebration—their gunfight will be the main attraction for the guests who are arriving from all over the country. The winner will get $10,000 and Beth, the loser...

Guild reluctantly gets pulled into trying to stop the fight—but matters of the...