Jim Hunter and Matt Harrison's Double H ranch thrived...till their crew marched away to war's glory, and they were ruined by outlaws who burned them out and murdered the last man on the payroll, harmless oldster Walt Burridge. Then the war ended, the two H's started over. But for Jim war and the Reconstruction had wrought changes beyond endurance. His former sweetheart, pretty Alice Cornhill, had been claimed by another. So Jim rode out and into the arms of his wartime love, the gunrunning adventuress Lena-Marie Baptiste. There, he was quickly trapped by his vow to avenge Old Walt. How would he choose between enmity and love, life and death?