In Death on Portal Mesa, author Jack F. Kirkeby sets his story near Portal Mesa, one of two mesas that serve as a gateway to a grand Wyoming valley. Riding up the switchbacks and across the vast mesas of Wyoming today, it's easy to imagine ranches in the 1950s when George Red Fox Bentley learns that his father has died in an accident on Portal Mesa. As the only heir, George returns home from college in Vermont and must quickly adapt to running a cattle ranch. And it is not long before George suspects that his father's broken neck was no accident. Could the experienced rider and rancher have fallen from his horse as reported, or do the rope marks George discovers on a tree on Portal Mesa mean that something far more sinister is happening at his Arrow---B Ranch? Though he can't get law enforcement to pay much attention, the half Arapaho, half Scot, relentlessly pursues the truth as he navigates his way through a powerful romance and a rural Wyoming county teeming with mobsters aiming to kill him and get his ranch.