The men and women who lived on the western frontier made history, and some, without knowing any better, accurately recorded the way it was. This story emerged after researching those sources that still survive. In rare and nearly forgotten books with time-yellowed pages, they described a land filled with hardship, courage, love, and, at times, unimaginable cruelty and violence.

Reconstruction politics left the settlers of Central Texas to fend for themselves and, with Indian Affairs in the hands of corrupt agents and inept Eastern romanticists, hundreds of families and individuals were slaughtered.

For whites, and eventually for the red race, this combination of government apathy, arrogance, and greed was catastrophic. In this battleground of two radically different cultures, ordinary people were called upon to do extraordinary things. This is a story of a man fighting for vengeance, a woman fighting for her child, and their fateful encounter. It is an education in history and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.