It was spring on the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains of Texas, the time for the cattle drives to push north to the rail heads in Kansas. The "Lost Cause" of the South was still fresh in the mind of Southerners, including fifty-five-year-old Ben Albright, a pioneer of the Texas cattle drives, who was well familiar with the trail and its dangers—he had successfully made five cattle drives from Texas to Kansas, but this spring will be his most difficult.
With the death of Ewell Lansing, Northerners have taken over his trading post and ferry and refused provisions or passage to Texas cattle drives. When Albright finds a way around this, tensions reach the breaking point, and a Northerner and his horse are found dead. Will the Texans be able to prove their innocence before the Northerners catch up to them?