9Until the night of the fire, Stanton, Montana, was a peaceful town. Its marshal, Silas Tasker, rejoiced in the knowledge that he had rid the town of the kind of rip-roaring reputation attributed to so many other cattle-towns across the west. But in the aftermath of the blaze that destroyed the barn on the Diamond-H ranch, a man lost his sanity, others died, and Silas found himself confronted with a feud capable of developing into an unstoppable range-war.