When Jack Danner arrived in Haley Ridge, his first thought was to ride on. However, a poker game beckoned and ended with him in jail overnight. The next morning a stagecoach rolled in bearing the august financier Spencer Bonnington and his niece, Sarah. Jack is the most surprised man in town when he is summoned by Spencer and offered fifteen-hundred dollars to escort Sarah to her dying father's ranch in Largo. So begins the hard ride across the desert in the middle of an Apache uprising. The there is Bob Rand and his cutthroat partners to contend with, who see Sarah as a woman to be enjoyed and a way to raise a ransom from the wealthy Bonningtons. Danner has a sense he's being watched, but by whom? What he thought would be an easy fifteen-hundred becomes the hardest money he's ever earned.