A meat shortage on board the Wild Card leads Chance ashore for game in the Dakota wilderness, and into an adventure he may never forget ... if he lives to remember anything! After a savage mauling at the claws of a grizzly bear, Chance falls prey to a pack of half—crazed vigilantes who mistakenly make him a guest of honor at a necktie party for a local murder. Escaping with his neck lands the gambler penniless in the frontier hellhole of Beltin, Dakota—smack—dab in the middle of an all—out war with the real killer's clan—the mongrel-mean Ransom family.