It's the late nineteenth century US. When he was a boy in the Wyoming Territory, John William Goodnight was on a covered wagon that passed as the local stagecoach in the area with his farmer parents and Judge Aldous Shaw and his wife Rebecca Shaw, who the Goodnights had only just met before the start of their travels from what was then a town called Dry Gulch, which has now been renamed Crooked Stick. Targeting Judge Shaw who had just convicted their partner, bandits attacked the wagon, killing all on board except John and Mrs. Shaw, who ended up raising John as her own. A Chicago lawyer who believes in the law but not in lawyers, John, who lives hard and according to Rebecca should long ago have been dead because of it, has just been appointed by the Governor of Illinois as a circuit court judge for the Wyoming Territory, known as the most lawless region on the continent. Rebecca is the one who arranged this appointment, as she feels that John's recklessness is due to still being ...