The Sackett brand: Forty gunslingers from the Lazy A have got Tell Sackett cornered under the Mogollon Rim. They're fixing to hang him if they can capture him alive, fill him extra full of lead if they can't. But the Sacketts don't cotton to that kind of treatment. Hunt one Sackett and you hunt 'em all. So they're riding in from all over—mountain Sacketts, outlaws, cattlemen, bankers and the rest. They'll fight with Tell on this one—if they can get there before Tell kills all forty hardcases himself.

The lonely men: Tell Sackett had fought his share of Indians and managed to take something of value from his battles: a deep and abiding respect. But that respect is lost when Apache braves kidnap his nephew, forcing Tell to cross the border into the Sierra Madres to bring the boy back. What troubles Tell more, though, is the boy’s mother: Could she possibly be inventing a rescue mission to deliver her husband’s brother into an ambush? Tell knows that the only things he can depend on are his wits and cold steel. But against such adversaries, even these formidable weapons may not be enough.