Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpoxepidemic sweeping turn-of-the-century East Texas—orphaning him and his younger sister, Lula.[7]
Then a travelling group of bank robbers murder Jack's grandfather and kidnap his sister Lula. So Jack enlists the only people he can: a bounty hunting dwarf named Shorty, a grave-digging son of an ex-slave named Eustace, and a street-smart woman-for-hire named Jimmie Sue who's come into some very intimate knowledge about the bandits. Together the rag-tag group trail the group of criminals into the Big Thicket where they hope to rescue Lula and collect the bounty on the heads of the bandits. Soon they discover these are not your run of the mill bank robbers. They are vicious and sadistic killers and the prospect of rescuing Lula unharmed looks bleak.[8][9][10][11][12]
