Kansas, 1872. A hardbitten young rider once followed William Quantrill into the burning streets of Lawrence - a name still spoken in whispers across the prairie. Nine years later, the war is over and the railroads are creeping west, but the survivors of that bloody dawn have not forgotten. Hunted halfway across the country and dragged back in handcuffs, the former guerrilla finds himself bait in a railroad swindle, a pawn for a wealthy schemer who means to carve a brand-new town out of the buffalo grass. Caught between the lawmen who want him hanged, a gambling-house woman who would risk everything to save him, and the daughter of his deadliest enemy, he learns that some debts can be paid only in lead. In a frontier boomtown built overnight on greed and grudges, every quiet street hides a Navy Colt - and the man who will not draw first may not draw at all.
