The frontier doesn't forgive weakness, but it makes exceptions for men who understand it. Kiddie is one such man: a scout of uncanny skill who has just ridden back into the Wild West after time in England, carrying with him the manners of another world and the instincts of the plains. He arrives not a moment too soon. Old Man Birkenshaw and his small band are hunkered down, waiting for a raid by Chief Broken Feather's warriors, and their only hope lies in the remarkable abilities of a man who isn't there yet. What follows is action stripped to its essentials: desperate rides across open country, tense standoffs at dusk, and the eternal question of whether one man's nerve can outlast a band's arrows. Leighton writes with the kind of stripped-down efficiency that early adventure fiction demanded, never wasting a sentence when a glance or a trigger-pull will do. At its heart, the novel asks what happens when a man of apparent refinement must prove himself against the harshest judges on earth: the land and the people who call it home. It is for readers who want their Westerns lean, their heroes competent, and their dangers immediate.
