Everyone in Halbrook had liked Hal Simpson and when his dead body was found inside the ambushed stage, tempers rose to lynching heights. Yet when the killer's body hung limply from a tall cottonwood and it should all have been over, the real trouble had only begun. For Judge Anderson, an upright and respected lawman, had tried to save the prisoner and bring him to a legal trial, and in the gun-torn riot that had followed his denunciation of mob law, someone had shot the Judge. Just whose hand had fired the shot it seemed impossible to determine, until the Judge's son, Jason, rode into town on a trail of vengenance.