When his nephew is kidnapped by Apache warriors, Tell Sackett becomes the loneliest of men. No stranger to the cunning of the Apaches, Tell knows they can smell a white man a mile away - and then shoot his eyes out at a dead gallop. Accompanied by John J. Battles, Spanish Murphy and the half-breed Tampico, Tell is lured into the Apaches' Sierra Madre stronghold, impelled by the pleas of his nephew's mother. But as he searches for the boy, he begins to suspect that his deadliest enemy may not be the kidnappers. Could his nephew's mother be inventing a rescue mission to deliver her brother-in-law into the hands of an ambush? When water runs thicker than blood, Tell has only his wits and cold steel to depend on.