Publisher's Synopsis
Montana. The drought of 1886. The hard winter of 1887. Overgrazing, Texas fever, foreign investors, and strong-arm cattle associations it took just one simple invention to make these hardships tinder for a brush fire of discontent: barbed wire. The law allowed a man to fence two sides of the range he worked. But John Quincy Putnam, known as Quin, has neighbours who disagree. With widespread support, the Birkenheads cut miles of his fence, threatening Quin's beef cattle and his carefully husbanded winter grass with their hungry longhorns. Quin is a tough, quiet Harvard man against more than a dozen vigilantes who are desperate to save their herds. In need, he turns to young Nicole Aumont, the first woman lawyer in the territory. If together they fail to find redress, Quin will have just 20 acres of feed, and winter coming.
