Searching for a home on the range, a rancher finds death under the cottonwoods

Samuel Wilders tried to love farming. But after years of roping cattle, this cowboy found it impossible to settle down on the Nebraska plains. With his young wife and children in tow, Wilders sets out for Montana—where the sky stretches farther than the eye can believe, and a man needs only a little water to ranch. One day, he leaves his family behind under the shelter of a cottonwood and rides toward town, hoping to do some trading. Before Wilders can get there, a gang of bandits mistakes him for a horse rustler and strings him up from the nearest tree.

Abandoned on the range, the Wilders family waits for a husband and father who will never return. A wandering Indian must protect them from Samuel Wilders’s killers—men who are still hungry for blood.