Summary
A dust-laced sun bleeds over the Rio Grande as Ranger Jack Keith—spurred rowels flashing like metatarsal claws—rides into a territory carved by fear. The Border Wolves, a hydra-headed cabal of marauders, have turned mesquite thickets into abattoirs; their leader, the obsidian-hearted Black Bart, pins a massacre of innocents on Keith with the casual ease of a gambler palming an ace. Shackled, disgraced, the Ranger escapes into a labyrinth of arroyos and stumbles upon a half-burned cabin where Hope Waite—Eastern silk amid prickly-pear thorns—awaits a father who may already be carrion. Their trajectories braid: she seeks a lost sister, he seeks exoneration. Bart, smelling kinship like a wolf scenting lamb, coaxes Hope to launder a blood-spattered check lifted from the very general he believes he has buried beneath alkali. But the corpse walks: General Waite arrives in town upright, shadowed by Christie, the prodigal daughter, resurrecting familial constellations just as Keith corrals the Wolves in a twilight showdown where every bullet sings of restitution.
Synopsis
Texas Ranger Jack Keith, is instructed to track down a gang called the Border Wolves, whose brutal raids have terrorized the countryside. When several members of the gang murder a band of squatters, Black Bart, the head outlaw, has Keith arrested for the crime, but the ranger escapes and flees to a lonely cabin. There he meets Hope Waite, who has come to the Southwest to meet her father, General Waite, and look for her long lost sister. Keith takes her to a boarding-house and places her in the care of Mrs. Murphy, but Bart, having met the girl earlier, discovers her whereabouts. The crook asks her to cash a check for him without revealing that he stole it from General Waite, whom he believes he murdered with the gang of squatters. General Waite arrives in town unharmed, followed by Christie McClaire, his missing daughter. After the family is reunited, Keith rounds up the Wolves and returns the general's check to Hope.
