The seventeenth book in the Mountain Life Western Adventure series from Charles Ray! Caleb and Flora, accompanied by their entire menagerie, including Snuffy, the brown bear they adopted as a cub, are scouting new hunting grounds when they come to Muddy Branch, a small town that is under the thumb of a local rancher who rules with an iron fist. Lorne Bracken, who insists on being called Elder Bracken, has a group of black-clad ruffians to enforce his dictatorial rule, and he does not like having strangers in town. Caleb, though, doesn’t like being ordered around and when he meets Rosie Donovan, owner of the town’s only restaurant, who also rebels against Bracken’s domineering, he pushes back and decides to stay. When Bracken’s thugs are not enough to intimidate Caleb, he hires a gunslinger, setting up a violent confrontation that will test the limits of tolerance and justice.