George Alden Morgan in 'Gunnison Butte' never knew his father and is abandoned at fourteen by his mother who runs off one morning, leaving George eleven silver dollars. Now on his own, George steals a fine horse and a gun and leaves town. Later he realizes he is being followed. But his pursuer is stopped and sent packing by another man, hiding in the shadows. That man is Boone Helm. Because Boone knows how to survive in the wilderness, George accepts Boone's offer to side him. What happens to George afterwards is something he could never have imagined. Jared Carson is 'The Drifter,' a man always on the move, taking seasonal work as a cowhand when need arises. He finds a wrangling job on the Five Pointed Star, a small ranch owned by Clem Forsythe. The two get along from the beginning, although Jared soon realizes that Forsythe has a powerful enemy in Harry Brogan, a well-to-do businessman in the nearby town of Cinnebar. When Forsythe is shot in Brogan's saloon, he expresses his last will to witnesses before he dies, leaving the Five Pointed Star to Jared, and all the trouble that goes with it.
