Book 1

=Plot=

Chapter One: The Weight
John is on the road from Oregon into Nevada, on foot, when a figure on a motorbike meets him. The rider wipes out into John, at low speed. One of the rider's hands is mangled; two fingers have been recently severed, and he is apparently too sick to ride any farther. John decides to rescue him, lashing the rider behind him on the motorcycle and driving back north to the nearest town.

The rider, Cody, is running from a man named Ethan Rouse. He worries John intends to rob him, or hand him over to Ethan, when John stops to buy gas for the bike. Whatever John's intentions, Ethan's caravan of motorcycles catches up to them before they can get on the road again. Ethan demands that John hand cover over to him, claiming Cody owes him a lot of money, and "He belongs to me, or he belongs dead." John fires his shotgun into the crowd of bikers and rides the bike through the middle of them to make a get-away.

John realizes that with the gang in pursuit, he cannot stop in the nearest town to find a doctor for Cody. Instead, he must go further north, into Oregon, to Chokecherry Cattle Ranch, where he was raised: the very place he was running from. When they reach the turn, John brakes to leave a tread mark turning in the opposite direction, then hide just in time. John and Cody make it to Chokecherry, and John leaves Cody in the barn while he goes to the main house for medical supplies. He returns to find Cody being harassed by a calf, and starts to clean Cody's fingers.