Jess finds himself in a gun battle with the crafty outlaw, Lewis Crocker, in Hempstead, Texas. Crocker has already shot the town marshal and escapes Jess’s grip. Jess eventually tracks Crocker to the town of Furman, but again, Crocker slips through his fingers. Worse, the outlaw uses dynamite to try to kill his pursuer. Jess sees the ambush in time to save himself, but his two horses are slightly wounded.
While in Furman, a ranch hand working for a cattle baron finds Jess and offers him money to just talk with his boss, Adam Thatcher. Jess, knowing his horses won’t be able to ride hard for a few days anyway while they are tended to, agrees to the meeting.
Thatcher had originally wanted to hire Jess to transport his daughter, Ruby, to Topeka, Kansas, but when Jess arrives, Ruby has run off with one of the ranch hands. Jess agrees to borrow a horse from Thatcher and find out where his daughter is, but things get complicated. The man Ruby is in love with is a kind-hearted fellow and Jess doesn’t want to hurt him. Separating the two seems impossible.
Jess begins the task of escorting Ruby to Topeka. Along the way, trouble pops up, again and again, making Jess’s job more dangerous. Meanwhile the elusive and crafty killer, Lewis Crocker, gets farther and farther from his grasp; however, as always, Jess is not one to give up easily.
Jess leaves Frank Reedy behind and heads to the town of Lockton, Texas, on the hunt for his next man, Lar Clemson. After bringing Clemson into Lockton to collect the bounty, he learns that a young woman, Crissy, has been kidnapped by four outlaws.
Jess decides to track the men and find Crissy. Her freckled and red-haired brother, Red, goes along with him. They quickly find Crissy, but she has been brutalized by the four men. The terrible scene brings back Jess’s memories of his family’s murders, especially the ruthless torture and killing of his little sister, Samantha.
After tempering his rage, Jess goes on the hunt for the four men, who are now all wanted dead or alive. Crissy’s brother is hell-bent on going with him. They start tracking down the men, but they prove to be elusive prey. Jess promised Red’s mother that he would do his best to protect him, but Red gets shot after freezing up during a gunfight with the four outlaws. Worried Red might be a liability, Jess has to decide whether the young man should continue the hunt or be sent home.
Jess left John Booth and the town of California, Texas, behind him as he headed for Bastion, Texas, where he hopes to find the next man he is hunting, Charlie Gibbon. When he rides into Bastion, Gibbon has already killed again and left.
While in Bastion, he finds three Indians have been murdered, and no one knows why. When Jess pays a visit to the man they worked for, he hires Jess to track down the killers. Before he begins the hunt, he is surprised to find Wildcat in the same town.
They team up together and hunt for the killers. The hunt turns deadly after the leader of the three killers murders his two partners and heads out alone. The chase is on. Meanwhile, Charlie Gibbon is still out there, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. Jess needs to finish this job and get back to the business of hunting Gibbon. To add to his list of things to do, Jess receives a wire from the United States Marshal Frank Reedy about another bad guy in need of being hunted down and brought to justice, dead or alive.
After leaving Jackson, Texas, Jess and Bodine head to Stratton, Texas, where Jess has agreed to take some time off and fish in the lake he and Henry Stratton built. Along the way, they stop off at the town of Berkshire.
They quickly learn that the town’s officials, including the marshal, have turned the town into a haven for outlaws, charging them a daily fee to stay there without being bothered. At first, it seems to be harmless, as none of the outlaws bothers or harms the local townsfolk and the businesses in town charges the outlaws double for whatever they buy or consume.
That quickly changes when a cold-blooded killer by the name of Jake Rickman rides into town and stays at the hotel. Bodine is awaiting a wire back from United States Marshal Frank Reedy, asking if they should interfere with the town’s operation. The answer from Frank Reedy is what Bodine expected: Pin their federal badges on and clean up the town.
Jess kills a hired gun working for a cattle baron who has a huge ranch outside of Berkshire. The rancher tries to bribe Jess and Bodine with money, but when that doesn’t work, he tries to run them off with hired killers. Jess finds himself ducking bullets and facing the best gunslingers the cattle baron can buy…and he has no shortage of money.
Just when they think things can’t get any worse, Frank Reedy is wounded by two outlaws passing through Stratton, Texas. Jess and Bodine want to leave Berkshire and hunt down the two attackers, but they still have to deal with the cattle baron until their replacements arrive.
Jess is on the hunt for his next prey, Max Thunder, which leads him to an almost deserted town called Appleton. He puts Thunder down and heads to the town of Pinkney, directly into another fight with the rest of the Thunder family. Bullets fly and two more men in the Thunder family die.
While in Pinkney, he has an encounter with a woman by the name of Martha Heller. She doesn’t think much of what he does for a living. Three men attempted to rob the stagecoach she was riding in, but she shot two of them, wounding one of them seriously.
Jess joins the posse on the hunt for the three men. They bring in three dead bodies but the stagecoach driver refuses to take Martha on the last leg of her journey to the town of Harrison, Texas, where she is supposed to take over as the teacher.
Against Jess’s warnings, she travels alone to Harrison, but is almost raped and killed by one of the men Jess is hunting. He saves her life and escorts her to Harrison, where the schoolhouse has burned down. Jess begins to have feelings for Martha, but she is not happy with his life of bounty hunting. He leaves her in Harrison, but he feels as if he is leaving a part of himself there. He continues on the hunt for more bad men, but the memory of Martha Heller will haunt him for many years to come.
When he continues on his hunt for more bad men, Shadow suddenly shows up. Then, he receives a special assignment from United States Marshal Frank Reedy. Two outlaws have hanged a Texas Ranger in Verde, Texas, and Reedy wants Jess to track them down. Before he begins his hunt for the two outlaws, his good friend John Bodine joins him and the hunt for the two murderers begins.
The only problem is, the closer they get to the killers, the more dead bodies they find.