Charles Perrault de Hautcoeur was a small man with a giant ambition. Inside of old New Mexico, he is very much in charge of his family, his retainers and his slaves. But his vast domain is under continual threat of attack by Espejo, a fierce Comanche chief. Espejo is bound and determined to take Hautcoeur's beautiful daughter, Luz, as his wife. Hautcoeur is a powerful man, but he knows when he's in over his head, so he implores Boone Helms, an experienced Indian fighter, to help him save Luz. Dane Coolidge's background as a naturalist is a trademark of his Western fiction. He was intimately familiar with the vast, isolated regions of the American West and its deserts - a hallmark that brings his fiction to vivid life. A New York Times review once claimed that "No other man in the field today writes better Western tales than Dane Coolidge."