"I don't care who calls himself major-domo. Where Red sits is head of the table," said one of redheaded Jim Silcott's friends to lovely Anne Eliot.

Jim was filling in as editor of the Powder Horn Sentinel after the former editor and owner, Carl Rogers, had been shot down from ambush because he dared to buck the mighty Hat T gang. And Jim was carrying on Rogers's fight against the dictatorial Russ Mosely in the feud over the conflicting land grants to former Spanish landholders which affected the lives of nearly all the settlers on Tincup Creek. He had carried it to the point where his own life was worth not much more than a dime.