Sheriff Joe Brooks was talking to a young prisoner who gave him some incredibly bad news. Three notorious gangs of outlaws had merged into one large band big enough to take over entire towns in his sparsely populated county. It was when they began to terrorize his county that he had to act, and he’d have to take them on alone.

The Witch's medicine was bad. She must be killed. But she ran before they could act. She ran across the Dakota prairie until she could run no more. She turned and faced the oncoming warriors. She had no hope, yet she would defy them until the end. Then, came the thunder.

Joey couldn’t imagine a better 13th birthday. He’d been given his first pistol and now was going to join his six older brothers on tomorrow’s job. They were going to trust him with covering their escape after robbing the bank and he was determined to do it right. He was immensely proud to be a Hogan, and his tough brothers were his heroes.

Eighteen-year-old Garrett Shaw and his father spotted the rustlers and pulled their Winchesters. They kept their muzzles pointed away from the three men who were stealing eight steers from their small ranch to give them a chance to leave peaceably. When they started throwing lead, Garrett and his father began returning fire. Garrett hit one of the rustlers just as his father’s horse went down. Hours later, as the doctor examined his father’s injury, Garrett knew that it was now his responsibility to provide for his crippled father, mother, and sisters.

Doc Holt listened to the boys at the other end of the bunkhouse as they joked about the night’s excitement, and he felt sick. What they were doing bothered him. Why they were doing it bothered him. But most of all, why he wasn’t doing anything to stop it bothered him.

Mattie Foster had made a terrible mistake. She had left Missouri and come to Green River, Wyoming to find her father; a father who was not the man that she even knew. Now, she was being held by two men against her will. The man who was determined to find her was a rancher. A rancher with a debt to repay.

Virgil Scott and his best friend Roy Sheffield left their horse ranch and were making one of their routine runs to Denver to deliver 32 horses. But the short trail drive proved to be anything but routine when late that first night, they were set upon by men wielding deadly clubs.

Susanna stared at her father’s body on the floor, his life’s blood still pooling near his head. She’d murdered her own father, and even as she stepped slowly away from the horror, knew that there was more terror in her future. Soon, a man with a badge would come through that door, arrest her, and then they’d slide a black hood over her head, and she’d plunge into cold darkness before her receiving her final, eternal sentence.

Luke Scott just needed to track down some rustlers.The biggest question he had as he rode form his ranch was what kind of idiot rustles cattle in Colorado in December? Three hours later, as he tried to find his way to safety in a howling blizzard, just staying alive was much more important. It was what he found when seeking emergency shelter that would alter his life forever.

The sky was ablaze with shooting stars. Everyone had marveled at the sight, but as Zack Dyer watched and wondered what they meant, he heard a voice telling him why they had appeared. He suddenly knew what they signified and that he had been chosen to lead the faithful away from here to a place where they would be safe from what was to come. He must show them the path to a haven from destruction.

Sixteen-year-old Henry was ejected from the enormous St. Martin ranch and told never to return, or he would be shot on sight. He vowed to return and seek revenge against the entire family. When he finally returned, it wouldn’t be as Henry St. Martin, it would not be as a 16-year-old boy seeking justice for his mother, but as a hardened lawman with the name of Alex Paine.

Fifteen-year-old Joe Beck wasn’t listening as the minister eulogized his uncle but was already planning on what he would have to do as soon as they returned to the Quimby farm. He wasn’t welcome there even before his uncle had died and knew that his cousin John would soon order him to leave. While he had had a basic idea of where he would go after he left the farm, he didn’t know what he would do with the rest of his life.

Will noticed that the numbers didn't add up when he was 11, but he didn't discover the truth of that mathematical problem until he was 17. For most of his young life, Will had known Pearl as his older sister, but only after the man who had acted as his father died did he learn that she was really his mother.

The scheduled train from Granger was overdue by three hours. He’d suspected a mechanical breakdown or maybe even a derailment. But the engineer of the next train to use that track had just reported that he hadn’t found any signs of the train. He had no idea how an entire train could simply vanish, but as he pondered the mystery, the head telegrapher came to his office and showed him a telegram that had been sent to Union Pacific headquarters. It was a ransom demand for $100,000.

Kyle MacKenzie left Fort Omaha to head to do some scouting at Fort Sully in the Dakota Territory at the request of their new commander. He’d been riding west for a few hours with his packhorse in tow when he noticed a set of wagon tracks heading northwest that appeared to be just a couple of days old. It raised his curiosity, and as the tracks were going in the direction he was headed anyway, he followed.