The first in a new series featuring an avenging agent appointed by President Grant to settle scores and see that all is right in the West. Zak Cody, son of a wily prospector and an Apache maiden, is thought to have retired as a colonel serving under General Grant, but in his transition to Presidency Grant has appointed this war hero to the role of enforcer and avenging angel of America's untamed regions. Now "the Shadow Rider" and his ebony steed Nox patrol the west assuring that wrongs are righted and those of ill will meet their maker. Heading for a rendezvous at an Army outpost in Arizona he comes across wagon train savaged by Indians and a young woman in need of saving, but not all is as it seems. Dark forces on all sides work to insight genocide and claim the land, and all its riches, as there own.