Publisher's Synopsis
No book has a better claim to have invented the myth of the American West.
It is 1871 in Cottonwoods, Utah. A woman stands accused. A man, sentenced to whipping. Into this travesty of small-town justice rides the one man the town elders fear: the gunman, Lassiter. It doesn't take long for Lassiter to see that this once-peaceful Mormon community is controlled by the corrupt Deacon Tull. Tull is a powerful elder who is trying to take rancher, Jane Withersteen's land by forcing her to marry him, branding her foreman as a dangerous outsider. Lassiter vows to help them, but when the ranch is attacked by horse thieves, cattle rustlers, and a mysterious Masked Rider, he realizes they're up against something bigger, and more brutal than the land itself.
