Fifteen-year-old Henry Appleton lives on an isolated farm in Nelson, New Zealand. He devours dime novels about American cowboys and dreams of having his own rifle and becoming a gunslinger like Wild Bill Hickok. But his daydreaming becomes a terrifying reality when two strangers ride into town: the physician Zephaniah Smith, who is hunting down his wife’s killer … and the ruthless highwayman Richard Burgess who plans to rob a bank with his gang. Over the next three days, Henry is threatened, kidnapped, shot and left for dead in a riverbed. When the gang murders a group of travellers from the goldfields, the injured Henry is determined to bring them to justice.