Winston Starr

Lone Star Winston Starr

Sam Deeds is the sheriff of Rio County in Frontera, Texas. A native of Frontera, Sam returned two years ago and was elected sheriff. Sam's late father had been the legendary Sheriff Buddy Deeds, who is beloved by the town, remembered as a unique individual with a great sense of fairness and justice. As a teenager Sam had problems with his father and the pair routinely argued and fought.

Sam is particularly disapproving of efforts by local business leader Mercedes Cruz and Buddy's former chief deputy, Mayor Hollis Pogue, to enlarge and rename the local courthouse in Buddy's honor; he considers it an unneeded waste of taxpayers' money. As a teenager, Sam had been in love with Mercedes's daughter Pilar, but the courtship was strongly opposed by Buddy and Mercedes. After a chance meeting, Sam and the widowed Pilar, now a local teacher, slowly resume their relationship.

Colonel Delmore Payne has recently arrived in town as the commander of the local U. S. Army base. Delmore is the son of Otis "Big O" Payne, a local nightclub owner and leading figure in the African-American community. The two are estranged because of Otis's serial womanizing and abandonment of Delmore's mother when Delmore was a child. Two off-duty sergeants from the base discover a human skeleton on an old shooting range on the base along with a Masonic ring, a Rio County sheriff's badge, and later, an expended pistol bullet, very unusual on a rifle range. Sam brings in Texas Ranger Ben Wetzel to help with the case. Wetzel tells Sam that forensics identify the skeleton as that of Charlie Wade, the infamously corrupt and cruel sheriff who preceded Buddy. Wade mysteriously disappeared in 1957, taking $10,000 in county funds, after which Buddy became sheriff.