The Classic Sheriff Ben Stillman Series Begins...Playing poker, smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey - retirement was treacherous business for ex-lawman Ben Stillman. The best of life seemed to be past, but then the past came looking for him. The son of an old friend rides into Ben's life with a plea for justice and a mind for revenge. Up on the Hi-Line in Montana, a rich Englishman is rustling ranchers out of their livelihoods...and their lives. The boy suspects these rustlers have murdered his father, Milk River Bill Harmon, and the law is too crooked to get any straight answers.

"Bloody" Joe Mannion is a town tamer of great renown. Known as the most uncompromising lawman on the Western frontier, he's been the town marshal of Del Norte in the Colorado Territory for the past five years. One day in Del Norte, he loses his famous temper and badly beats Whip Helton, the son of a prominent rancher. That night, the son and his outlaw pards burn Joe's house and kidnap and rape his daughter. Joe goes on the warpath, getting crossways with the son's father, prominent rancher Garth Helton. 

Love and death, bullets and blood.... Sheriff Ben Stillman finds himself in the unenviable position of having to arrest a young man for murder on suspicious evidence. But the cards are stacked against the young firebrand who calls himself Johnny Nevada. One, Johnny has gotten Judge Hoagland’s daughter pregnant, shaming and enraging Hoagland himself. Two, Johnny warned Dave Bliss he was going to kill him because Bliss ordered Johnny to stay away from Bliss’s daughter, Sarah, whom the young Casanova was also sparking. Johnny made the warning public and two weeks later Bliss was dead.

Johnny Shooter was sentenced to hang at noon. But Judge Isaac Parker, widely known as the "Hanging Judge", made Johnny an offer he couldn't refuse. The judge made him a Deputy United State Marshal, then sent his new deputy after the worst-of-the-worst outlaws the Indian territory had to offer, with the orders not to burden the court by bringing them back for trial. Now, rumor has it that whenever outlaws gather around a campfire, the word is: "The only thing worse than standing before the Hanging Judge is hearing that Johnny Shooter is on your trail!"

Robbers and cold-blooded killers won't stop Stillman.... He’s desperate to overtake the robbers and cold-blooded killers before they murder his wife and the doctor. He doesn’t realize just how badly Triber wants that money returned to him...nor what it is for.