Silver Moon Rising — Ethan J. Wolfe

Emmet Lang is a very unique type of outlaw. A veteran of the Civil War, he returned home to find his family murdered and the family farm destroyed. Bitter and disillusioned, he wandered the south and west and struck upon an ideal way to make a living, to steal from criminals.

Lang and his small band of three outlaws plan the perfect robbery. An Indian Affairs agent is traveling by stagecoach to Denver. In his possession is forty thousand dollars he embezzled from funds destined to help the native tribes in his care. Lang and his gang hold up the stagecoach at a way station and relieve the Indian Agent of the forty thousand. Also on the stage are Rosa Escalante, and her son Joaquin and two soldiers. Lang's men betray him. They knock him unconscious, kill the soldiers and stagecoach drivers and then drive the coach with Rosa and her son away from the station where they violate her and then tie her and Joaquin up and abandon the stagecoach.

Realizing he will hang for murders he didn't commit, Lang must put distance between him and the way station. He needs time and a safe place to organize his thoughts and figure out what to do and he heads for the secret outlaw hideaway in the Big Horn Mountains known as the Hole in the Wall. Lang needs two things to make good on his plan, a horse and luck. What he doesn't need is Rosa Escalante and her son following him, but that's what he gets.