Under the Diehard Brand

In the classic western movie The Searchers Jeffrey Hunter plays a young man with a mission in his heart and a chip on his shoulder. The character might well have been modeled on eighteen-year-old Lee Thompson, a trail-hand on a mission of his own—to save his dad, Diehard Thompson, the aging sheriff of Wolf River, Montana.

Old Diehard’s lost control of his town, and it seems every outcast and outlaw west of the Mississippi is on the prowl in Wolf River. Now Lee’s come all the way from Texas t...