Texas was savage - a land of wild rivers, killing storms - alive with Comanches whose barbarism was legend, and white men who¡d kill a man for his boots. It took a man like Ross Phillips to tame Texas. Phillips rode north from Mexico at the head of a mighty wagon train laden with bullion worth a million. His aim - to rip from the very guts of the land a short-cut trail to Arkansas. Days swam into weeks and weeks into months, men died and mules dropped - and still Phillips lashed the train north. Waiting for him was Muke-war-rah, cruellest of all the Comanche chiefs, who held as hostage the woman to whom Ross Phillips owed his life.