Five years after the momentous battle on the Little Big Horn, Charles Wolfe Collins, erstwhile Pinkerton operative, has been working as a payroll guard and manhunter, confronting violent criminals throughout the towns and countryside of Montana Territory. Unexpectedly hired as an agent of General Alfred Terry, Commander of the Department of Dakota, Collins and his guide embark upon a journey across the northern prairies and up into the North-West Territories of Canada, seeking a defiant Lakota chief. Mired in racial hostilities, military aggression and famine that will culminate in tragic loss and deplorable injustice, Collins must navigate a changing landscape, fraught with white settlers and soldiers who no longer tolerate any Indian not confined to a reservation.