"The tragic hero who helped save the Union and created the myth of the American gunslinger." In 1859, as the United States careened toward civil war, Washington's only northern link with California, America's richest state, was a stagecoach line operating between Missouri and the Pacific, a service plagued by graft, outlaws, and hostile Indians. During this critical period, the comany enlisted a former wagon train captain and Mexican War veteran to clean up its most dangerous division. Over the next three years, Joseph Alfred "Jack" Slade exceeded his employers' wildest dreams, capturing bandits and horse thieves, and driving away gangs; he even shot to death a disruptive emloyee. Across the Great Plains he became known as "The Law West of Kearny". He kept the stage coaches and the U.S. Mail running, and helped launch the Pony Express, all of which kept California in the Union - and without California's gold, the Union would have failed to finance its cause.