Black Jack Hollis had been killed as Elizabeth Cornish watched. Recklessly, joyously, his black hair flying, Jack had ridden into town to see his infant son. Then a shotgun, fired from a window, had blasted him from his horse and flung him to his death in the street.

"I want his baby. Go out and get that baby for me, Vance," the spinster Elizabeth ordered.

"My dear," her brother Vance declared, "before that baby is twenty-five—that was his father’s age—he’ll have shot a man....Blood will out, like murder, Sis....Bet you on it!"