The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it — when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm.

He calls himself The King. Once a respected professor, he was ruined by scandal. Now, he rules his own “country”—an area of western territory where an army of outlaws enforce his laws. Any town he claims as his own must pay “taxes,” collected from bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. When he learns that President Rutherford B. Hayes and General William Tecumseh Sherman are venturing into the far west on a tour of the nation, The King devises a plan to kidnap America’s leaders and expand his empire.

Jonas Madigan is dying. He spent his life taming towns and upholding justice across the west with no regrets. Along the way, Madigan took the measure of good men like Smoke Jensen, who has traveled to Salt Lick, Texas to pay his respects to the lawman. But when bandits gun down the small town’s current marshal—and Smoke sends the killers to Boot Hill—Madigan asks his friend to wear the badge and keep the peace until a permanent replacement is sworn in. Turns out the bandits were members of Bishop’s Mauraders, a 20-man gang of trigger-happy thieves led by the vicious and venomous Snake Bishop.

On nothing more than a lark, he leaves his family and begins a journey from Ohio westward. Along the way, he runs up against badlands and bad men, loses his freedom, gains his freedom and learns the first rule of the frontier: Do whatever it takes to survive. With ruthless enemies after him - both White men and Indians - he’ll head for a place as brutal as it is beautiful - the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains.

Matt Jensen, reared by legendary mountain hero Smoke, is the last of a proud breed. He will soon learn that dispensing justice with a gun is the only true way to execute righteous revenge in the Old West.