Author Description

Born to slaves in Dickson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Mordecai Jones strikes out for the West, settling in Kansas after the war. He is barely eighteen and already endowed with reckless and romantic readiness. In the wide-open Kansas cow town of Junction City, he joins up with an outfit from the Texas Panhandle and begins riding the range and fighting Indians, outlaws, and the elements. But those who live by the gun, men born with trigger-magic--men like one of the fastest and deadliest, Jim Creighton, a man Jones soon finds himself in a group with. Until Mordecai saw a man die from one of his bullets, Jim Creighton would remain his pattern--until his first killing sent him forever on the dodge. This was the notorious company young Mordecai Jones craved to ride the raw red trails with, no longer a free man, to regret instead of glory in each new notch he cut in his Colt! This is the story of Mordecai Jones.