For ex-Texas Rangers Wash and Chance Carston, Charlie Goodnights’ first cattle drive spelled danger and making it through alive turns out to only be half of the fight in this Western novel based on the real Charlie Goodnight and his legendary first cattle drive. Wash and Chance Carston came of age during war and grew to be legendary horse breakers of the Texas planes, but none of the hard fighting they’d done before could prepare them for Charlie Goodnight–a no-nonsense, tough talking Texan with his own way of handling problems.

The Carstons join Goodnight and his herd as they set off to drive two thousand longhorns to Fort Summer in New Mexico Territory, through the forbidding Staked Plains east of Pecos River: the Llano Estacado.

The Carston brothers, alongside Goodnight’s handpicked men, must battle with Native Americans and rustlers, intense heat, and homesickness before the ride is over. Just as the drive is reaching its end, the Carston brothers realize that they’ve only faced half of the fight, as they find out their home at Twin Rifles is targeted by an outlaw with vengeance in his heart.

With the Civil War marking the end of their famed rough-riding legion, Wash and Chance find themselves in a land of violence and brutality, scarred by war and uneasy in peace, fighting anywhere and anyone to uphold their honor and the Ranger code.