Three deaths near the village of Santa Fe are seemingly unrelated, except they are so gruesome they just could be the work of witches. Governor Anza begs Nando to return to dampen the witch fear building in town; all very well except one of the women he is supposed to hunt down may be his own girl friend. And who killed the pretty prostitute, and then the caravan master, who seems to own half the town?Desperation mounts as fleeing women capture Nando and leave him to die in a remote mountain cave. Join New Mexico's Governor Anza, the two-fisted old lady who is Nando's stepmother, and a host of unlikely villains: priests, medicine women, and wealthy landowners, in a roiling saga of unforgettable vigor from the time when the American deserts belonged to the King of Spain.