Although this book is the second in the Reno Western Saga, it is not a Sequel to Reno, the first book.

In this story, Ada Lindsey is on the stage out of Dallas. Her son offers her some water, but she refuses, which seems to upset him. A drummer on the stage named Smith decides that he has a pout like a little child, he pulls out a bottle of whiskey to take a drink. He passes it around, most everyone takes a drink, including a cowboy & a mountain man. The stage throws everyone toward the woman, when the son asks if she's alright, she answers that she hasn't been alright since they left Dallas. They stop for a food break & the son suggests that they walk around a while. He wants to explain how he feels, but knows that his mother had been the wife of a small town lawman & probably wouldn't change. He wishes she would have stayed in Dallas, but she feels that since he is all she has, she had to go with him. They walked back to the station & ate a meal. They were traveling to Rimrock, where his father was marshal, & he suspected that his mother still had feeling for his father, although they had been divorced a long time. When they got back on the stage, all the passengers waited for the woman to be helped in first, a new man joined them & tossed his saddle up to the guard. The man seemed to be drunk, the way he moved about. The stage moved out shortly. A gambler named Rossiter later noticed that the man wasn't drunk, but sick, because of his flushed face. Mrs. Lindsey insisted that he be removed from the stage. The driver said that he could be left at a shack where they watered the horses. The gambler decided to stay & asked for his bag, which was thrown down & the driver took off. Al Rossiter took their possessions inside & prepared to care for the sick man. He couldn't figure out what made him stay. The man woke up & drank some of the water that Rossiter offered. His remark that Rossiter was a funny kind of gambler upset him, but he introduced himself, but the man fell asleep before giving his name. Rossiter sat looking out the window wondering about his problems. ( )