The Fourth Gun

Young Billy Forest gets into a couple of shooting scrapes just after he musters out of his regiment at the end of the Civil War. He decides he must move away from his family farm in Ohio to avoid further trouble. Before the war he had started training to become a trial attorney. Now, he finds that he is immersed in conflict, both with his guns and in his new profession. He begins to excel at both. However, at the same time, each new confrontation he faces brings with it the torment of a recurring image of battle. Billy suffers from what was then called "soldier's heart," now known as PTSD.

Billy and a couple of saddle partners decide to settle in Colorado. Here, Billy meets Lin-Chi, an old Chinese laundryman who is well-versed in the ways of chan (zen). He is drawn to the old man's stories and lessons about an approach to life that seems at once exotic and yet strangely compelling. He will need everything he learns to face what could be his final conflict - a gunfight he cannot avoid with a man he thought was a good and loyal friend.