The actual newspaper accounts of the day were brief and to the point: On a sweltering August night in 1871 the town of Newton, Kansas, became the scene of “Newton’s General Massacre,” an explosive gunfight in which six men died within ninety seconds.
Three more were wounded, one of whom was later killed under curious circumstances, and witnesses credited most of the killings to a young boy known only as Riley, who disappeared soon after.
But behind the historical facts lies one of the West’s most puzzling enigmas — a mystery whose solution is suggested here in a powerful tale of justice, murder, and revenge centered on an unexpected friendship between a hard-bitten railroad troubleshooter and a consumptive youth.
When Mike McCIuskie arrived in Newton to negotiate an unorthodox busines deal for the Santa Fe, he knew he faced bitter opposition from the town fathers and an additional challenge from Texas cattlemen who wanted to make the town their own. But he never figured on befriending a homeles^Km whom fate had dealt an extra bad run of luck. Nor did he think that friendship would grow into one of the central forces of his life — a force which culminated that sweltering night in a bloody confrontation that determined once and for all what separates men from those who merely act the part.