In the North, a lanky lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was recovering from a brutal political setback. In the South, eloquent US Senator Jefferson Davis was risking all in a race for governor of his native Mississippi. And far to the Southwest, the future of the frontier was being decided as the US Army, under Colonel Bull Moose Sumner, faced the growing alliance of Native Americans led by the great Mangas Coloradas and determined to defend their ancestral lands.

For First Lieutenant Nathanial Barrington it was his first test as a professional soldier, following orders he distrusted in an undeclared war without conscience or quarter—and his test as a man when he met the Apache woman warrior Jocita in a night lit by passion that would yield to a day of dark decisions. Originally published under the pen name Frank Burleson