Thirteen-year-old Arty, is still struggling with bitterness over the death of his father, develops into a real cowboy. His mother reluctantly allows him to get his first gun when Marshal Bodie agrees to teach him how to handle it safely. Then a cattle-killing black cougar, named Phantom, returns to the territory; and Arty faces a situation that tests him as he's never been tested before.

In previous volumes, Arty Anderson, a teenage cowboy, has survived scrapes with a cougar and a flash flood, but this time he's up against a classic western villain-cattle rustlers!