Sometimes, a man's future and his destiny come down to one choice. For Latigo Smith, that choice is between staying as a deputy sheriff in Texas, or moving back to his home in Colorado. Latigo arrives to find Colorado booming with the arrival of railroads and the discovery of gold and silver. It's a place for a young man to make his mar. Latigo also finds strange clues to his family's past and a tie to a young woman he'd never met. The West was full of stories about striking gold in strange places, but Latigo had never heard anything about black pebbles. Not until he came to Colorado and met a young woman named Joanna.