They were young, proud - and they were all that stood between defenceless settlers and the warring Comanche. They were the Texas Rangers, struggling to bring law and order to the infant Republic of Texas.

Josh Sands is only twenty-two years old but has been with the Rangers for ten years. Ever since he was orphaned. Ever since he saw his family slaughtered by a Comanche raiding party. He has committed himself to ride with the Rangers until he can no longer sit astride a horse ... or until a Comanche arrow stops him.

Captain Jack Hays is a veteran, the greatest Indian fighter in the West. He knows that the only way to fight the Comanche is with their own brutal means, with Indian cunning ...

Josh Sands was far from his San Antonio station, but the fierce young Texas Ranger had sworn to protect the entire Territory from her enemies - including the Mexican warships unloading arms in the deadly swamplands along the Gulf of Mexico.

The last thing the hard-riding Ranger expected was to be corralled into Captain Isaac Burton's mad scheme for capturing the warships himself - with a handful of men who had never so much as seen a rowboat.

But Josh had to pursue a private vengeance as well: to hunt down a death-dealing devil known as Cotton Blue; a vicious gunrunner who had killed Josh's partner in cold blood; killed for the same pleasure other men found in a woman's arms ...

It would be unlikely that there would be no Texan republic without the fierce and fearless band of Texians who put their life on the line everyday, in service to their beloved country.

But when the cigar-chomping politicos back in Austin cut the Ranger's funds, the battle-weary Ranger Josh Sands made the most of the enforced peace and the generous charms of the beautiful Elena.

But Peace and pleasure were not to last. For, meanwhile, at the border, a precisely trained and inexorable machine of death gathered - mustering the might of the Mexican Army to test the strength of the embattled Rangers, and the whole fledgling republic.

While Josh Sands has been eating up the dust on a wild horse round-up, Comanche raiders have cut a bloody trail as far south as San Antonio.

With the Texas Rangers depleted, the Indians are growing in boldness and power.

Along with the undermanned Rangers, they're going to make a daring foray into the heart of Comanche territory to stem a tide of terror and destruction ... and give the Texians back their future.

Between a rock and a hard place ... that's where Texas Ranger Josh Sands finds himself when he joins an expedition from Austin, Texas, to New Mexico, with a crew bent on wooding Santa Fe from the Mexicans - peacefully.

The trouble is, the Mexicans have their own idea about how to greet this brave but inexperienced band who endured hardship and danger in hostile Indian territory - ambush and imprisonment!

Now it's up to Sands to take command.

In the dead of night he and several companions overcome their guards, steal guns and horses and light out for Texas. But the hardships they meet on the way to Santa Fe will double on the way back. Sands will need every trick of survival he knows to cover come the forces of nature - let alone the blood-lusting Apaches waiting to make his death a cause for celebration!