Jess is out on the trail looking for the killer, Ron Westfall, who murdered his former partner in cold blood while making the man’s wife and young son watch.
He then receives a wire with instructions from Frank Reedy to travel to Spruce to help out Matt Helm, a Texas Ranger. Helm was transferring the outlaw and killer, Alec Lynch, to the penitentiary when Lynch escaped, shot Helm and left him for dead.
Lynch took Helm’s pistol and horse and then found his extra Rangers badge. He began using the badge to pass himself off as a Texas Ranger to help escape capture.
Jess picks up Helm in Spruce and the two begin their search for Lynch, but fate seems to throw more problems at them, making the job of capturing Lynch much more difficult.
Jess is back on the hunt for more vicious killers. His first target is Howard McClure. He ends up in Clayton, Texas, where he talks to McClure’s brother Doug.
Meanwhile, he is still trying to figure out who paid the man called Jackal five thousand dollars up front to kill him back in Ludlow, Texas.
To complicate things even more, some unknown person is trailing him. When he finally confronts McClure out in his camp on the trail, the unknown person kills McClure with a headshot from a distance even Jess might not be able to make.
As he continues his hunt for wanted men, another hired killer confronts him, hired by the same shadowy figure hiding in the background. Before Jess kills him, he gives Jess some information that might help him figure out who is behind it all.
As he continues to dodge bullets and killers, he races to find out who is putting up the private bounty on his head.
He finds help in a very unlikely person.
Jess is on the hunt for the next killer on his list, Carsten Lowley. His pursuit takes him to the town of Liberty where he meets a young boy, Buddy, and his mother, Lydia. He discovers that the Bratcher brothers killed Lydia’s husband, Buddy’s father. He agrees to hunt the brothers down and takes Lydia with him.
Along the way, he discovers that the brothers have murdered another man, leaving the widow beaten and afraid to go back to her cabin outside the town of Tundra. Jess and Lydia meet with her, and she confirms that the brothers are the ones who killed her husband.
Jess eventually finds and kills both Bratcher brothers and then continues his hunt for Carsten Lowley. A gunfighter by the name of Marvin Birmingham finds Jess but struggles with the idea of challenging him.
Jess ends up in the town of Ludlow, where he meets United States Marshal Bob Brady, who’s there to take a prisoner from the jail and transport him. Brady is murdered along the way and Frank Reedy assigns Jess the job of hunting down the man who did the killing.
Jess deputizes Birmingham and takes him on the hunt.
Jess finally enjoys his time resting in his lake house in Stratton with Wildcat, Bodine and Reedy. After parting ways with the beautiful and deadly female bounty hunter, he was back on the hunt for Van Isidor, a man who had still eluded him.
He eventually gets Isidor, but not before he hears about a beloved preacher from the town of Sawyer who was murdered and the church money taken.
He then starts his hunt for the culprit, Cristian Lyon, and finds help in an old friend. The huge timber wolf named Shadow.
Along the way, there is a brutal murder of a town marshal in Crawford. What got Jess’s attention was the brutal way in which the marshal and his family were murdered, including his wife and two young children.
It brings back old memories of his family’s murders and he begins his hunt for the two killers.
He will deliver his personal form of justice to them…and they will pay.