Publisher's Synopsis
1885: The once beautiful Benevolence, wasted with cancer, traces her ex-husband, John Henry Summerfield, a gunman on the run, to the tiny town of Los Angeles, California. Bound to a wheelchair, with only a few weeks to live, she informs him that a gang of outlaws has kidnapped her daughters and granddaughters from their ranch in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory. The oldest daughter is the baby girl he deserted twenty years earlier to fight for the Union against the rebels; the younger daughter, sired by a second husband, has been either murdered or sold into prostitution, her prepubescent granddaughters traded to an Apache band taking refuge in the mountains north of Las Vegas. Reminding John Henry of the promise he made to her twenty years ago, Benevolence demands that her ex-husband hunt down the gang of kidnappers, kill them all, and rescue the women and girls. Handicapped with missing fingers, he has not handled a pistol in years, so is reluctant to fulfill Benevolence's demand for revenge. John Henry Summerfield, has been on the run for ten years following a shootout in which he killed the son of a Texas cattle baron, who, ever since, has been pursuing him. He shot down seven seasoned cowboys in two days on the streets of Fort Hays City, Kansas -- the battle cost him the two smallest fingers on his pistol hand. In gratitude for his service as a soldier and an army scout, Union soldiers helped him escape Kansas; frontier towns heralded the shootout to be without equal, bequeathing an unwanted legacy on John Henry. Unprepared, poorly financed, and poorly armed, the ex-husband departs Los Angeles to hunt down the kidnappers, knowing the vengeful road will be long. Needing money to buy weapons and a good horse, he robs a Wells Fargo stagecoach outside of Salt Lake City, which puts a Pinkerton agent on his trail.In order to force the seven outlaws, who kidnapped and possibly murdered his daughter, into a shootout on the streets of Las Vegas, John Henry destroys the killers' home places, abducts the women and children, and delivers them to the Apache, hoping to bargain for Benevolence's two young granddaughters. But, white women to breed Apache warriors are not enough; the Apache demand rifles so they can join Geronimo in Mexico. Meanwhile, the seven outlaws are itching to reap revenge on the man who destroyed their home places and delivered their women folk to heathen Apache, but their planned robbery of a navy payroll train leaving Tucson for San Diego keeps them rooted elsewhere.After successfully ambushing the navy payroll train, murdering navy and marine guard detachments along with senselessly killing passengers, the gang takes refuge in a small Mexican village. The outlaws destroy the village and kill most of its occupants. With nowhere to hide in the U.S. or Mexico as lawmen on both sides of the border pursue them, they head for the Canadian wild lands. But first they detour to take revenge on John Henry Summerfield, who waits for them in Las Vegas. For Benevolence's avenger, confronting seven vicious killers in a frontier town notorious for its vigilantes and hanging windmill is much more daunting than shooting down seven cowboys in a Kansas army town
