Sheriff Mido Peters tensed himself readying for a lawless New Year's Eve in Labelle. Rich Jake Grady had promised drinks on the house to any man that night, and this, the sheriff knew, would mean nothing but drunkenness and riot. But the sheriff got even more than he bargained for. He had not expected gunplay, and when bullets were exchanged between two strangers in town, causing death to mark the holiday, it was plain that trouble was brewing--bad trouble. For the dead man was a phony U.S. marshal and his killer a wanted outlaw.