This is a story about ranching in the desert country of northwest Utah, southwest Idaho, northeast Nevada and southeast Oregon during the 1960s. It is based on the lives of people that made this huge open country their home and their lively hood, and takes place over a one year period from Christmas Eve to the next Christmas Eve where they all rendevous at the Sage Rat Flats Hotel.

This is a story about a hard headed, unorthodox U.S. Marshal, who goes head to head against a very large international drug ring, and how he brings them at bay. There is no quarter given in this war and justice can be administered in a blink of an eye with no regrets by these modern day law enforcement officers.

Helen Thompson a para-legal assistant employed by a large legal firm in Oregon, is asked to do a simple task of delivering some documents to a client, on her planned vacation to Hawaii. In return the firm offered to pay a substantial portion of her expenses, an offer she could not afford to turn down. From day one when she was met at the airport, Helen had an ominous feeling that there was more to this simple delivery of a Manila envelope full of legal documents then she had planned on. The danger she felt was brought to light the following afternoon when she was watching the big wave surfers on the North End of the island and innocently took a photo of a man just seconds before he murdered one of the top surfers in the world. At that moment her life changed as the cold fear of death spread through out her body, for she knew the assassin had seen her take the picture and would not let the sole witness live. The game of hide and seek had just begun.

When Tim Casey, a young Irish seaman recently beached in San Francisco, knocked on the rectory door of Saint Patrick's Church in answer to a help wanted ad, he was utterly astonished at what met him when the door swung open. When he stepped inside he began a very humorous and warm relationship with the resident in charge, Father Michael O'Leary, as Irish as paddy's pig. But wait a minute, this is Tim Casey's story, let's let him tell us about that first meeting. He knows more about it than I.