Jess is heading to the town of Fleming on the hunt for Mark Fitzgerald. Before he makes it to Fleming, three men attempt to rob him.
Things don’t go well for the robbers. When Jess continues on toward Fleming, he finds a young man by the name of Hud, who had been ambushed by the same three robbers. Hud is wounded and unconscious. Jess senses something off about the man but isn’t sure what it is.
After delivering Hud to the doctor in Fleming, Jess discovers that someone is trying to have him killed and paying money to the men who try. He continues on his mission of killing the worst outlaws, but the fact that men are being paid to kill him makes his job more dangerous.
He leaves Fleming while Hud is still healing at the doctor’s office, but he has a strong feeling that it’s not the last time he’ll see the young man. He makes a decision to attempt to find the person who has been putting up the money to have him killed, but this proves to be an elusive and very dangerous journey.
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.
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 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.
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.