In 1876, Ben Hawks quits the Texas Rangers and becomes a living legend. As songs tell of his riding the sky at night and dime novels follow his wild ride, he tracks the notorious Avery gang, who he believes killed his fiancée Lora in a stage robbery. Ben spends three years on the vengeance trail. He has gunfights with gang members who die without revealing what Avery looks like, and he spends his time dispatching upstart challenges to his fast gun. In 1879, Ben receives a letter from a deputy U.S. marshal at Carmody in western New Mexico Territory. Ben learns that the stage driver's watch had been found on a murdered ranch hand on the Larabee Ranch. Hack Larabee is a former outlaw and Ben suspects he could be Avery, even as the two begin a wary friendship. Ben gets hired on at the spread, despite Larabee's angry, sharpshooting niece Roxanna, and soon finds himself involved in the range war brewing between Larabee and the nearby Kendall Ranch . . .