It was meant to be Gideon Pike's last drive.

Thirty years on the Chisholm had left Pike with scarred hands and a name that could steady a nervous herd. This final push to Kansas was supposed to buy him a stretch of quiet land and an end to the saddle.

Instead, the plains take him in lightning and gunfire.

With Pike dead and eight hundred longhorns scattered in a rising storm, the drive is on the edge of collapse. Rustlers circle in the dark. A rival outfit waits for failure. The river ahead is already swelling.

And the only man left to take the reins is the cook.

Harlan Fitch never planned to lead men across open country. He knows beans, sourdough, and how to keep tempers cool around a campfire. Now he must hold together a frightened crew and a half-broken herd — or watch everything die on the Kansas wind.

On the Kansas Trail, storms pass.

But only if someone rides into them.