Written from actual news accounts of the day, this is the story of the first judge, William Gaslin in Western Nebraska, who adjudicated personalities who fought over the use of the land as cattlemen vs. farmers. The major trial of the story tells of the Olive Gang, as famous during that time as Jesse James.

Blackmailed into working for Isaac Parker, the notorious hanging judge, J.D. Preacher finds himself with a tin star on his chest and a lot of trouble on his hands: he must capture some of the scum terrorizing the terrority before the judge will clear his name.

The 70,000 square miles of the Oklahoma Indian Territory, The Nations, as it was called, was a land of vicious and evil deeds by cruel and heartless outlaws as well as renegade Indians. Mace Truax was the U.S. Marshal for Judge Isaac Parker's court for the U.S. Western District of Arkansas in Ft. Smith. The Judge was allotted 200 Deputy Marshals, but less than half that number was on the job when Parker took the bench. Together the Marshal and the Judge had to bring justice and peace to this land - using the gavel and the gun. Mace had to find hard but honest men to take on the badge, and the Judge had to try cases of horse theft, robbery, fraud, rape, and murder. It was an ongoing tale of the fight for law and order in the American West.

The most lawless land in the American West was the 70,000 square miles of frontier Western Arkansas and the Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes; what later would become Oklahoma. Rape, robbery, murder, horse theft, gun and whiskey running were the everyday crimes that often went unpunished. It took both the gavel and the gun --- and hangman¿s knot to tame this land. The Territory was a magnet to outlaws and spoilers of every brand. Law, order, and justice didn¿t come until almost ten years after the Civil War. Law and order finally came in the form of ¿the Hanging Judge,¿ Isaac Parker, a new U.S. Marshal, Mace Truax, and a Choctaw Indian Territorial Policeman named John Browneagle.