The drive is a risk, sure, but it's a part of the American Dream, a chance to carve a new life out of the last remaining wilderness.

"Marshal John Beck was the law in the dangerous town of Mother Lode, Arizona. On his own, he'd managed to keep bandits, rustlers, and desperados at bay. It was a tough job for one man to handle, but he made it work...until the day Bram Hogan and his Brickhouse Gang got the drop on the lawman. They beat Beck to within an inch of his life and dropped him in the desert where nothing but a slow, painful death awaited him. But the gang underestimated Beck....

"Fresh from a successful trail drive, cattle hand Seth Coe is feeling flush, especially after a lucky streak at the poker table. But his good fortune earns him a dangerous enemy, notorious tinhorn gambler Hannibal Fisher. Coe starts the long ride back to Texas with big plans to buy his own ranch. All he needs now is a wife. In tiny Prairie Fire, Kansas, he meets the perfect woman, his childhood love Josette Dubois. But she is under the thumb of her...