Some songs start with a melody. This one started with a man on horseback launching himself onto a moving train.

Chapter 1 of The Rustler Hunter opens mid-chase. J.J. Westin is closing the gap on a killer who slipped through his fingers three days before. Magnus is at full gallop, the locomotive is pulling away, and J.J. has one shot. He takes it — and for one terrifying heartbeat, there's nothing under him but frigid air and prayer.

That leap is where the song was born.

J.J. is famous. Best rustler hunter in the territories, and he'll be the first to tell you it's for all the wrong reasons. That tension — between who the world thinks you are and who you know yourself to be — inspired the song. The chorus came fast: 

Famous for all the wrong reasons / Never good enough for me.

But the deeper I got into J.J.'s story, the more I realized this wasn't just his song. It's for every man who's been running hard his whole life without stopping long enough to ask why. Chasing the next horizon, outrunning something he can't name — only to find out the thing he's been chasing and the thing he's been running from are the same thing.

That's J.J.'s arc in The Rustler Hunter. Turns out it's a lot of people's arc too.

The train-rhythm guitar riffs wrote themselves. The rest took a little longer.

Watch the scene that started it all, then follow it to the song. (less than 3 min.)

Chapter 1 — Excerpt

The Rustler Hunter

Trinidad, Colorado
January 10, 1898

J.J.

Best I could tell, the thieving rustler was about twenty minutes ahead of me. The second I leaped onto the back of Magnus, my flaxen chestnut mustang exploded into motion before my spurs even touched his sides. When I pressed him harder, he surged to a full gallop, his powerful strides eating up the frozen ground between us and the steel beast thundering ahead.

"Yaw!"

My voice carried sharp and urgent beneath my navy blue bandanna as we closed the distance. Magnus and I had been partners for over a year, and he read my intentions better than most men. The moment I pointed him toward that train, he knew we were chasing down something dangerous. His ears pinned back with determination, nostrils flaring in the bitter air.

We had a train to catch. More importantly, we had to bring down "Knife-Edge" Pete Kowalski.

Three days ago, Pete had slipped through my fingers when I'd raided his rustling operation outside Trinidad. Forty-seven head of stolen cattle, five dead cowboys, and a burned-out ranch house, but Pete had vanished like smoke. Word came this morning that he'd bought a ticket on the westbound Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. The snake thought he could run to the Arizona Territory and disappear into the desert.

He thought wrong.

The locomotive's whistle shrieked through the early morning silence as we approached the caboose. Icy wind cut through my duster, making my eyes water behind the dark spectacles. The cold bit deep, but Magnus never faltered, his breath steaming like dragon's fire as he matched the train's speed stride for stride.

"Yaw!"

Magnus closed the final gap with a burst of speed that would've left lesser horses gasping. I measured my timing with the precision that had kept me alive through eight years of hunting the worst men in the territories by calculating speed, distance, and trajectory. Too soon, and I'd be paste on the railroad ties. Too late, and Pete would slip away to terrorize more honest ranchers.

My heart hammered against my ribs as I launched myself from the saddle. For one terrifying heartbeat, I sailed through nothing but frigid air and prayer. Then, my brown leather gloves caught the caboose railing, my body slamming hard against the cold metal with enough force to rattle my teeth.

Magnus veered away from the tracks, his hoofbeats fading as I hauled myself over the railing onto the vestibule. Through the sting of tears and wind, I watched him slow to an easy lope. That mustang had never failed me yet. Lord willing, he'd be waiting when this was over.

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