The Last Ride of Grayson's Raiders

In 1836 on an island in the Mississippi River below Memphis there is an outlaw town of six to seven hundred men too mean to live anywhere else. The Mississippi is the Western frontier and this gang of outlaws, cutthroats and pirates terrorize the the lower part of it. Order in the hellish town is controlled by the worst of them, a man with no conscious and a quick pistol. John Murel might be best described as the devil, but his traveling disguise is a black suit and big Bible, a preacher. The gang is above the law since they pay off the law up and down the river to look the other way. The gang's preferred inhuman crime is the stealing of slaves. The stolen slaves are convinced that if they allow themselves to be sold to some unsuspecting buyer, they can then run away, back to the thieves who promise to take them to freedom. Of course it is a lie. They sale and resale the slaves until they become "hot" at which time they kill them. They open them up, gut them and fill the cavity with rocks to sink them in the river. One day the slave thieves steal two slaves in a wagon in Natchez and accidentally end up kidnapping the girl in the wagon. She is a girl of sixteen, a white girl. The girl is connected to Abel Grayson. Captain Abel Grayson is a hero of the War of 1812 though he ignores the honor. He led a group of men nearly as tough as him to New Orleans to fight for Andrew Jackson against the British. They were know as Grayson's Raiders--well known. In 1836 when the girl is kidnapped they are past the prime. Never-the-less, Captain Grayson saddles up and heads up the river after the girl. When word gets out his old Raiders, all that are left of them, two dozen, saddle up and ride along uninvited. Twenty-four men go north to come against seven hundred of the most bloodthirsty outlaws in the country--two dozen against seven hundred. The Raiders know the odds; they know the possibilities. But they go. The folks of Natchez watch them go and someone says "It's the Last Ride of Grayson's Raider."