When Clay Morgan and his sidekick Twitch Mabry rode out of Texas for Kansas City to pick up Clay’s orphaned nephew and niece, they planned to make the return trip in the debatable comfort of a stagecoach. They had no idea their return journey would be in a covered wagon, and that they would be saddled with a schoolmarm named Bill smuggling $25,000 into Texas; not to mention a niece who refused to talk and a nephew who would hire a cowpoke to clean Clay’s plow. An attack by a renegade band of Comanche and Choctaw Indians who were driven off with the help of Frank Fivekiller of the Cherokee Lighthorse fuels the fire on this wild ride; in addition to a betrayal by Clay’s best friend who wounded Clay and stole the $25,000. Kent Conwell grew up in the wide-open Texas Panhandle in the town of Wheeler, population 848. His love of the West came naturally for his grandfather had run away from his Tennessee home when he was 14 to bullwhack his way to the Panhandle where he later met his future wife who had traveled from Illinois to Texas in a covered wagon. After moving to Fort Worth where Kent was more at home at the stockyards than school, he earned a B.S. and began teaching. Later, he moved to Port Neches where he acquired a M.Ed. and Ph.D. A successful educator, his love for writing about the West has never waned for that was the one period unique to American History. He has won awards for short stories, screenplays, mysteries, and westerns.