Jim Cardigan and Smoke Purcell had been partners for a number of years. Smoke was a quiet, saving sort of fellow. Cardigan, ten years older and a lot less wise, couldn’t seem to keep himself out of trouble. Every so often he’d get roaring drunk, blow all his money, and end up, likely as not, in jail. But Smoke was always there to bail him out.

Jim figured he owed Smoke a lot. And he did. But it isn’t right for a man to be that much obliged to another. Because sooner or later one begins to expect too much gratitude, and the other begins to hate him for it. Then all it needs is the right situation for all hell to break loose.

It was pure chance that brought Jim and Smoke to the Ramey place just when Paul Ramey got himself killed in a burning barn. The Rameys ran a sheep farm. And nothing could have been further from the minds of the two cowboys than running sheep. Yet there was Lila Ramey, a woman alone - and she sure couldn’t run any sort of farm by herself. Not with neighbors so friendly they could hardly tell her sheep from their own, and couldn’t wait for the smoke to clear before offering to relieve her of her goods and chattels. Jim Cardigan and Smoke Purcell both had some ideas about that - and there’d be bloody results before they got it all sorted out.