Drifter Paul Hagar decides to settle down to homesteading in Wyoming, and unknowingly files a claim for a section of land that is the focus of a threatened land war among ranchers.
"Four western stories of the struggles around Santa Fe during New Mexico's transition from being a Mexican province to becoming a United States territory"--
Three short stories in which a US Marshal pursues a murder suspect near the Mexican border, an American agent tries to diffuse a conflict over the US/Canadian border, and a Scotsman tries to escape a curse as a trapper in the land of the Dakotas.