Buffalo Wagons: For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it. In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak in awe of a last great heard to the south--but no hunter who values his scalp dares ride south of the Cimarron and into Comanche territory. None but Gage Jameson.

Cloudy in the West: In the Texas backlands in 1885, twelve-year-old Joey Shipman's father dies under mysterious circumstances, and the boy is forced to live with his stepmother and Blair Meacham, a hanger-on at the farm. After the death of a black farmhand and friend, and another "accident" that almost takes Joey's life, the boy runs away and joins forces with his only kin--Beau Shipman, a drunk and a jailbird. Beau, along with an outlaw, a San Antonio prostitute, and a sheepman become Joey's unlikely partners as he is trailed by their murderous Meacham, in league with Joey's stepmother in their scheme to inherit the Shipman farm.