In the wild Bad Lands of eastern Montana, Blaze Carlin and his wiry French-Canadian companion, Frenchy Ditteau, ride out of a saloon brawl and into a frontier where survival depends on nerve, loyalty, and a private sense of justice. Their uneasy journey turns grim when they find a hanged cripple beside a squatter's cabin, a victim of vigilante brutality signed only by a mysterious "V." Blaze and Frenchy bury the man with respect, then push onward into cattle country ruled by the feared Black Mora, whose men, spies, and threats make the land feel captive. When the pair refuse to be driven off, gunfire erupts, and they are forced into a desperate running fight that ends in a burning ranch house and a hidden escape tunnel revealed by an Indigenous woman. Their defiance earns them a new role in Wolf Butte, where Judge Whalen and frightened townsmen beg them to challenge Mora's reign of terror. Blaze becomes deputy and Frenchy sheriff, and the two begin their rough, comic, dangerous attempt to impose law on a town mocked by drunks, watched by outlaws, and waiting for violence to break again. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.