Author Description

Dr. John Shasta left Chicago to avoid a prison term for crippling a man in a street brawl. When he arrived in Greenwood, Wyoming he found a man he looked up to like a father figure and settled down to practice medicine in a community of untamed men. When Edward Collier dies, he leaves John the guardianship of his daughter, Antonia, with permission to marry her. John accepts his responsibility and takes a position as a contract doctor at Fort Laramie where he can protect Toni from a man who wants to take advantage of her and turn her into one of his saloon girls. When Toni learns that her parents are dead and the influenza has left her deaf, she relies on John for not only medical treatment, but also friendship and love. Together they start a life together, which is soon changed by tragedy and an old man's greed. After they are separated from each other during a trip to Chicago, Toni relies on John's father's ghost to lead her home.