Most folks either loved or hated the McCallum boys. Everyone feared them. Their crusty father had brought them up to Wyoming from Texas and died, leaving them only half-grown and rough-tempered. To their neighbours on the Porter ranch, Rose Ann Porter and her niece Becky, the McCallum boys were helpful, attentive and polite. All four of the boys were half in love with Becky, and the Duchess was to each of them the mother they had never had. The law had different ideas about the McCallums, whose wildness had progressed from recklessness to a community danger. Rose Ann Porter, unwilling to call on the boys again, had hired a man from Medicine Bow to drive her small horse herd to market. Unfortunately the man, Manassas Guileford, had more on his mind for the Duchess and Becky than a few chores. In the end Guileford would regret his plot. He had not yet met the McCallum boys.