Central Kansas Library System

John Henry Cole, working as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Judge Isaac Parker's court in Arkansas, was on assignment in the Indian Nations, in pursuit of a group of white renegades who were in hiding there above all a particularly vicious renegade named Caddo Pierce. He had a wagon of captive renegades when he was shot and seriously injured. He managed to come out of the Nations with his prisoners, but decided that he had enough of that job and so resigned....

When Cole's agents set out to capture the notorious Sam Starr and his outlaw gang, an informer leads them into an ambush, leaving all the men dead except for Charley Hood and Cole himself, and they are both severly wounded. When Sam Starr finds out that Cole and Hood escaped, he sends a warning to Red Pony: he intends to raid the town and kill the two detectives. Cole and Hood flee into the mountains, but this is no real escape. The Starr gang...

"John Henry Cole agrees to escort an old rancher and his two sons to an outlaw stronghold to arrange for the release of the man's kidnapped wife after the Pinkerton sent to deliver her ransom has been found dead with the money gone"--