Jack Carrs nemesis comes within shooting range of ending Jacks dream of pioneering a cattle ranch operation with a new breed in New Mexico on a Spanish land grant his mother inherited. Utter tragedy is defl ected from his family by a network of government offi cials and lawmen, neighbors, Native Americans, and cowboys all of whose own fortunes are forever changed by bullet holes and bludgeons. Will Jack ever be able to sleep with the nightmares that scream accusations at him nightly? The crewman most responsible for defending Jack is his temperamental opposite whose life experience loaded him with a passion for vengeancea passion nearly matched by one criminals drive to avenge his own familys perceived wrong at Jacks hand. Jacks family is cheated out of living happily ever after and accommodates to its loss. Pride, challenge, terror, and growth are elements of the story set in the period when telegraph lines followed western movement after the civil war and President Ulysses S. Grants administration.