Journal of the gun years: After surviving the Civil War, Clay Halser kills a man in self-defense and heads west to escape hanging. To survive on the untamed frontier of 1867, Halser becomes a crack shot. But he soon finds that there's always someone wanting to meet a legend face-to-face, gun-to-gun. One man alone, locked in a desperate struggle against forces bigger than himself.

The gun fight: John Benton was one of the toughest men ever to wear a Texas Ranger badge. But eight years ago, in August 1871, he hung up his guns for good. Or so he hoped. Then young Robby Coles challenged him to a fight over some imagined slight to the boy’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend. At first Benton tried to laugh off the affair. Why, the boy was little more than a child. But rumors and gossip spread like wildfire through their dusty frontier town and soon enough the entire community seems to be goading both men towards a fatal confrontation neither one truly wants. Benton doesn’t want to kill again. Robby is secretly terrified of facing the legendary gunfighter. Yet, with both men’s honor on the line, is there any way to avoid a duel to the death?