Twelve Days in the Territory opens with a gunshot. There's a robbery, a murder and an abduction. A gang of hard men have fled into the wilderness -- where the outlaws are far more dangerous than the natives who live there -- with Martha, a young woman, as insurance against pursuit.

But the woman's uncle, Sheriff Gillette, is on their trail. With him is Will Burrows, a schoolteacher with little to no experience with guns or posses, who has been courting Martha and refuses to leave her rescue in other hands.

It seems like a pretty clear cut case of good and evil, set in the Wild West of 1887. But, as author J.R. Lindermuth shows us, most people have shades of gray. Take the sheriff -- he's got plenty of grit and wilderness experience, but he makes rash decisions, has some nebulous feelings about justice, and he's plenty unforgiving, even when someone has gone far to earn his trust.

Will's evolution from start to finish is fairly predictable, and some bad men -- like the killer Enos and the outlaw Lazarus Lee -- are simply bad. But then there's men like Craw McKinney, who can be a remorseless outlaw in some instances but who has the beginnings of a conscience, sparked no doubt by his loyal wife and loving children back home.

I kind of regret a path not taken in the plot. Lindermuth sets us up with a classic Ichabod Crane/Brom Bones dynamic between Will and Gillette's deputy, Lou Cole, both of whom are competing for Martha's affections. Sadly, Brom -- I mean, Lou -- doesn't ride with the posse, so that relationship is never explored.

Another dead end comes from the summary on the book's back cover: "Martha is a strong-willed young woman ... (who) steadfastly finds ways to outwit the outlaws." Strong-willed, yes, and anyone in her circumstance would do well just to stay alive, but the book doesn't really give us many examples of her outwitting her captors. She simply survives, and hopes for rescue.

The novel is short, just under 200 pages. It's a quick read, and you'll want to keep turning pages to see what happens next. Perhaps the threads were tied up just a little too neatly by the end, and the book could have used a better proofreader, but Twelve Days in the Territory is an enjoyable story about determination and bravery in the Old West.