After spending a week resting in his house on the lake in Stratton, Texas, and delivering Pearly Bullock there to be hung by the United States Senator Mark Lusk, Jess is on the hunt for his next prey, Lee Mason.
He encounters three men at a river and then runs into a lawless and inexperienced posse who are chasing after the men who robbed the bank in Glasser, Texas. He convinces the posse to let him go after the three robbers, who refuse to give up. He ends up killing all three men and returns their bodies to Glasser.
While there, he runs into a young woman by the name of Nellie Lawson. He is captivated by her and spends the night with her. After hearing her story, he decides to help her catch the men who killed her parents and raped and tortured her for weeks.
They began their hunt for the four men, who are all living under assumed names, but Jess is not one to give up easily.
Before Jess leaves Wildcat in Summerlin, Texas, he receives a wire from United States Marshal Frank Reedy. He is assigned to hunt down the vicious outlaw, Pearly Bullock, and deliver him to Stratton, Texas…alive. The fact that Shadow stays with him when he leaves Summerlin is a clue as to how hard the assignment is going to be.
As unhappy as he is with the idea of bringing Bullock in alive, things become worse when every bounty hunter finds out the reward is twenty-five thousand dollars. Every gunslinger and bounty hunter worth his salt begins hunting for Bullock, getting in Jess’s way at every turn.
His job of getting Pearly back to Stratton alive becomes a difficult task, but he finds help in another gunslinger turned bounty hunter. They team up, but as things get worse, Jess begins to wonder if he should just shoot Pearly himself and be done with it.
As they make their way to Stratton, they run into one problem after another, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them. Jess begins to worry more about whether or not he’ll get to Stratton alive, much less get Pearly there.
Jess finally catches the next man on his hunt list, Andrew Poppet. In exchange for his life, Poppet reveals the location of the Boone gang, one of the most notorious gangs in the West. Lawmen and bounty hungers have been searching for them for months, but no one has been able to find them.
Jess makes a deal with Poppet and locks him up in the jail in Waterville, Texas, with a promise that if Poppet is lying, he’ll come back and send him straight to hell with a bullet. He heads to Summerlin, where the gang is hiding out in a very secret location west of town.
Surprisingly, when Jess arrives in Summerlin, he finds Wildcat, who is on the hunt for Laban Eastwood’s partner. If that isn’t enough of a surprise, he finds the huge timber wolf, Shadow, with Wildcat. The fact that Shadow is with her is an omen of some tough times ahead, but neither of them realizes just how tough things are going to get.
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.