Son of an Illinois merchant, young Billy Longbaugh looked on helplessly as his family's fortunes unraveled during the Civil War. Billy's father, Ezekiel, went off to fight, opening the way for a scheming uncle to steal away the family business. Prosperity became poverty, a condition Ezekiel was helpless to reverse when he returned home to Springfield. Fortune intervened one day, a windfall in one hand and scandal in the other, forcing the Longbaughs to hasten west for a new life in the gold fields of Montana. In the chaotic boom towns opportunities were fleeting, the threat of disaster close at hand, and schemers, conmen, and faithless business partners repeatedly got the better of Ezekiel. Constant witness to his father's failures, and influenced by the violence and bloodshed of the frontier, Billy engaged in fantasies of revenge and gunplay, mere day dreams to make a humiliating existence more palatable. He never imagined that fate would soon turn his fantasies into reality, and his existence into a nightmare.
