When a 13-year-old boy strikes out on his own in 1885, leaving his Civil War ravaged Mississippi homeland for the wild Red River borderland between North Texas and the Indian Territory, most of the American West is a land beyond the law. It is an outlaw haven with only vigilante justice, posses, and the hangman’s noose to fill the void. But by the time the young man - now a veteran outlaw - dies by the gun in 1929 after a tempestuous career, the Old West has been largely tamed, its official legal system firmly in place.

Through a series of linked, true-life tales of crimes and trials, veteran defense attorney and prosecutor Neal takes readers from Mississippi to the frontiers of West Texas, the Indian Territory, the New Mexico Territory and finally to the frozen Montana wilderness. Tracing the struggles of incipient criminal justice in the Southwest through an engaging progression of outlaws and lawmen, plus a host of colorful frontier trial lawyers and judges, Neal reveals how law and society matured together - a virtual anecdotal textbook which follows a bloody trail until finally the gavel-wielding, black-robed Judge Blackstone at last gained ascendency over Judge Winchester and Judge Lynch.