The devil's due

After a seven-year absence lifelong friends Buell Mace and Simon Steele return to the town they grew up in. Carlisle Nebraska in 1879 is trying to become a more genteel and law abiding place than the one hot-headed Buell remembered at age nineteen. Sheriff Lorin Staker one of the first people Buell talks to on returning offers Buell a badge. The sheriff is having trouble with drifters camped on a five-hundred-acre sandbar three miles down the Platte River. Buell turns him down his disdain for authority deeply seated. He does however ride out to take a look at the camp.