Joe Picketts in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs Wyoming but there have been strange things going on in the mountains & his conscience wont let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted tents slashed elk butchered. & then theres the runner who simply vanished one day. Joe doesnt mind admitting that the farther he rides the more he wishes he could just turn around & go home. & he is right to be concerned. Because what awaits him is like nothing hes ever dealt with like something out of an old story except this is all too real & too deadly. When hed first saddled up hed thought of this as his last patrol. What he hadnt known was just how accurate that thought might turn out to be.