A western the Tampa Bay Times hailed as "perfect!" 

"I reckon you don't know who you're talking to, mister. I'm Monte Lyman, and I'm not afraid of anybody, let alone a saddletramp drifting through town. Hell, I wouldn't even waste my time looking at you, except that I can't let folks get the idea that it's healthy to tangle with a Lyman.... All right, boys, go get him!"

But the man Lyman was "teaching a lesson" to was no fiddlefoot drifter. He may have looked like one, but he was Jim Dixon, a fast shooting, fast thinking freighter who had come to town alone to scope out its business possibilities. But Dixon's men and wagons weren't far behind and together they made a hard-fighting partnership no man or men could stand against. Lyman had given Dixon a reason to stay, and so had his meeting with Ellen Carter a woman of good breeding and exceptional strength, married to one of the slimiest tinhorn gamblers in the West.

Lyman held the entire town of Cottonwood in a grip if fear and everyone paid tribute to him. But not Jim Dixon. He was the only man who dared stand up to this two-bit tyrant, and soon the trails into and out of town were ringing with gunshots and one of the deadliest battles the range had ever seen. 

Because the only lesson Dixon learned from the midnight beating was that he'd better waste no time lining up his six-guns on Lyman's whole sidewinder crew. Dixon's only fear was that he would have to kill Ellen's husband - and that meant he could never marry her. But Ellen and the women of Cottonwood had their own plan for dealing with the war.  

Either way Lyman and his men were about to be tagged "fast freight for Boothill."