Mark Kelton is eighteen years old -- part boy, part man. On the trail to set up ranch in eastern Oregon, his parents are killed by an unknown assailant and their strongbox containing $8,000 is stolen. Marks heads out onto the empty plain where he encounters Bronco Curtis, a man who knows what he wants, and Curtis befriends the young orphan. When Curtis was a boy, an older man had done the same for him. Under Curtis's tutelage, Mark becomes a hardened...