Overview
FIRST EDITION. Hardcover in DJ in Good Condition. Ex-Library
Jeff Layne, the young Confederate veteran and hide hunter of Kelton's awardwinning "Slaughter" is older and ready to foresake the Staked Plains, now littered with the bleached skeletons of massacred buffalo. He has decided to return to his southern Texas homeplace and settle into a relatively peaceful life of a cattle rancher. Accompanied by his business partners, Nigel and Arletta Smithwick, and his cheerful friend Cap Doolittle, Jeff retraces his steps along the Dodge City-Wichita trail.
Unfortunately times have changed in the border town of Piedras, Texas and the disillusioned Jeff finds himself caught in the midst of a fierce border war between dispossessed Mexican ranchers and his longtime enemy Vesper Freed. Jeff has never forgotten how Vesper ousted the Laynes from their land under the carpetbagger regime. Nor has he forgotten that Freed married the woman he once loved. When the violence escalates, Jeff sides with the Mexicans.
If Jeff can get out alive, he plans to drive his Longhorn herd north to a distant canyon he remembers from his hide hunting days, a natural sanctuary where the buffalo once roamed free, and Jeff hopes he can at last find peace.