Summary
A spectral tableau of post-bellum disillusionment, His Enemy, the Law charts the slow oxidization of one man’s moral compass after love is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Jack Rogers, gaunt in Union blue, strides back to a hometown whose porches already sag beneath the weight of mercenary verdicts; Sarah’s father, ledger in hand, voids their betrothal like a banker foreclosing on a dream. The frontier, that vast forge of American myth, becomes Jack’s anvil: he swings a pick, then a pistol, until a stage-coach holdup spatters red across alkali dust. From this crucible emerges little John, reared by the very badge that slew his sire, his filial memory weaponized into a courtroom scalpel that slices justice to ribbons. When Sally—blonde revenant of the woman Jack lost—pleads for her lover’s life, John’s victory pyre consumes both client and conscience, leaving only ash and the faint ember of a marriage that might cauterize two bloodlines scarred by capital, caste, and the long American habit of confusing profit with providence.
Synopsis
Captain Jack Rogers returns home from the Civil War to find that his fiancée's father has broken his engagement to Sarah Catherwood because Jack's income is so low. Jack goes West to earn his fortune but soon hears that Pamela has wed her former suitor, Randolph. Heartbroken, Jack proposes to a widow, but their marriage is so unhappy that he leaves, taking his son John with him. In the town of Ten Strike, Jack robs a stage and is shot by a posse. The sheriff adopts little John, who grows to manhood nurturing such an intense hatred for the law that in his renowned law practice, he intentionally helps notorious criminals escape justice. Sarah's daughter, Sally Randolph, begs John to defend her lover who has been charged with murder, and John succeeds in winning his freedom, but upon the young criminal's release from prison, he is shot and killed. When John and Sally discover that their parents were in love, they marry and begin a new life together.
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