Nearly thirty years after first claiming their homesteads in the South Park Basin of what is now central Colorado, the Clarkson and Swansons had used the formative years to wisely build a well-respected cattle ranching empire that over the years had served well in providing the miners and local Indian tribes with some much needed eating beef.

 

They had faced countless hardships during those days, but none as grief filled as when the family matriarch and patriarch were killed in a barn fire that was at first thought to have been an accident.

 

It was then that the real struggle to hold onto what the Lord had provided reared its ugly head in the form of a gang of outlaws who had been hired by an unscrupulous greedy man named Charles Huffington.