Ben Sladeen had come to Two Mile and taken a job as ramrod of the Barbed Wire spread with the intention of starting a new life. He wanted nothing to remind him of the old days in New Orleans, when he had been carefree and in love until the King brothers and Curly Temper had shattered the idyll and forced him to leave town.
Trans-Pecos had been running into unexpected difficulties while trying to complete its line across the Drifting Sands country. Besides the ordinary hazards of laying track across that wild section of West Texas, it had had to contend with Slash Hanlon's outlaw gang. The last two payrolls had been held up, and the workers at Eagle Camp at the end of the tracks had quit work and were threatening to riot if they were not paid.