Steel Fixx and his cousin Honus Rust are enmeshed in a feud started in their youth in Tennessee and carried with them as they moved west. Hatred pushes each man far past the boundaries of sanity. Then the unthinkable happens: Steel's daughter Molly becomes pregnant and her cousin Jorod Rust is found responsible. Steel forces the couple to marry. When Molly later dies in childbirth due to Jorod's negligence, Fixx takes his daughter's children home with him. But Honus Rust, deranged by hatred and debauchery, will not allow his grandchildren to be taken from him. The feud between the two men will lead to violence and bloodshed as the price of hatred is exacted from both the guilty and the innocent.

The vast blue sky. The endless flow of pristine waters. The days of summer that seem to have no end . . . All this belongs to Scotlin Bright as he gallops from one adventure to the next with no thought of tomorrow. Tomorrow is for grown-ups. Today belongs to Scotlin. Every summer since his eighth birthday, he's run the trot-lines on the Stream River, eaten fried fish, and tried to play his Uncle Roz's fiddle. He never tires of the tales his uncle relates of his time in France during the Great War, although Roz says there was nothing great about the war. It's an idyllic life for Scotlin. But his happiness is harshly interrupted when Scotlin learns he must soon leave the river to take his place working his father's farm, and worse, face the sorry prospect of going to high school in the fall. Of course he bows up and demands to stay on the river with Uncle Roz. What boy would trade paradise for work and more endless work, year after year? He vows to stay by the river. Scotlin must learn that life isn't a playground made for his amusement, that fairness isn't part of the growing-up process, and that death is always closer than you think. 

Axel Twelvetrees and his gang of ruthless cutthroats enter Jack Mahan's saloon in Sweet Home, Kansas, slices up him up with a razor, leaves him for dead, and kidnaps his woman, Carla Daws. This leaves Mahan mentally and physically wounded. But he recovers, strikes out in a frantic search for Carla, and to settle his score with the mad man, Twelvetrees. Twelvetrees is backed by hell itself, and Jack realizes this will be no easy undertaking. Twelvetrees made a crucial mistake by not killing Mahan, for Jack comes riding for him at a wild, heart-pounding pace and turns aside all the primitive, hot forces of hell to free Carla Daws, and to bring Twelvetrees to justice.Axel Twelvetrees and his gang of ruthless cutthroats enter Jack Mahan's saloon in Sweet Home, Kansas, slices up him up with a razor, leaves him for dead, and kidnaps his woman, Carla Daws. This leaves Mahan mentally and physically wounded. But he recovers, strikes out in a frantic search for Carla, and to settle his score with the mad man, Twelvetrees. Twelvetrees is backed by hell itself, and Jack realizes this will be no easy undertaking. Twelvetrees made a crucial mistake by not killing Mahan, for Jack comes riding for him at a wild, heart-pounding pace and turns aside all the primitive, hot forces of hell to free Carla Daws, and to bring Twelvetrees to justice.