Salida has fallen silent. Fourteen hundred people gone. A wall torn down from the inside. And in the empty square, a woman waits at a table with a child who should not exist.
Holt McClandrey came north to save a town. Instead he finds a canyon, a river, and one bridge standing between four hundred and fifty hardened raiders and everything left alive in the valley.
He has a hundred and sixty defenders. Old men. Teenage boys. Women who have never been shot at. A one-legged veteran, a country doctor who refuses to arm children, and a Ute named Bear who knows exactly what it costs to do the things nobody else will.
The enemy has mortars, discipline, and a commander who keeps a list of names.
Nine days of siege. Four assaults. Every round counted, every grave dug by hand.
And two hundred miles south, the Lazy River is burning.