Nebraska, 1876. The western frontier is wild and needs a man to tame it. Joe Mundy is such a man. A veteran of the Civil War and Indian wars, he once wore a badge in the booming cattle town of Baxter Springs, Kansas. A deadly gunfight with a prominent rancher cost him that badge. He finds his next job enforcing the law in Taylorsville, a new town in the sandhills of Nebraska on the road to the lawless Black Hills gold fields. Rustling is rampant, and retribution from Kansas is only one of the dangers Mundy faces as marshal.