A massacre stole everything-the trail to El Paso might give him a reason to keep going... Fourteen-year-old Benjie Willow should've died with the rest of his family. Hidden in a water well as Comanche raiders swept through his ranch on the Red River, he emerged into a world he no longer recognized-alone, grieving, and hunted. When seasoned frontiersman Malvo Tanner and the quiet Choctaw warrior Chito-Oche spot smoke on the horizon, they don't expect to find a terrified boy as the only survivor. Taking Benjie in, they set off for El Paso, dragging him through lawless lands where danger rides faster than justice...and the past haunts every mile. But the West isn't kind to orphans, and as Benjie struggles to find his place in this brutal new world, he'll have to learn what it means to survive...not just in body, but in spirit. Will the trail harden him into something unrecognizable...or forge a future he never dared to imagine?