"It all started when President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation that all fences on public domain property had to come down -- and that meant nearly every strand of barbed wire in the Arizona Territory. It was Marshal Cody Venture's job to follow this order, and that meant that Tim Auliffe's mammoth cattle empire would come crashing down in ruins. Tim Auliffe had raised Cody as his own son and had been his best friend. And now, Cody Venture was the man with the guns on his hips and the law behind him who had to go back home and deliver the crushing news -- news that would bring a savage war to the Seven Slash Range!"-- Publisher description.