In the early 1800s, a Kentucky farm boy abandons the security of home, and his girlfriend, for a life of adventure. At 16, Titus Bass runs away to become a deckhand on a Mississippi flatboat, the first of many frontier escapades. But he tires of adventure and becomes a blacksmith.

Grizzled mountain man Titus Bass experiences a series of frontier adventures, from a searing fight with the Comanche to a chase after horse thieves.

As mountain man Titus Bass watches his lifestyle fade away as the Rocky Mountain wilderness becomes home to an ever-growing number of settlers seeking a "civilized" life, he struggles to maintain his dignity and feed his family.

After his disastrous stalemate on Powder River, Crook retreats south for the winter. In spring his is the first column to set off for Indian Country. From his supply base at Goose Creek, Crook plunges after the hostiles reportedly on Rosebud Creek. Caught napping three months to the day after the fight on Powder River, Crook wages his personal duel with Crazy Horse in a dramatic day-long battle just eight days before Crazy Horse will crush Custer....

After a year of retirement at the end of the Civil War, George Armstrong Custer is summoned by General Sheridan and appointed to the cavalry to quell the Indians of the Southern plains territory. Success in this area leads Sheridan to have Custer subdue the Sioux and Cheyenne of the Northern plains. Custer carries on an extra-marital affair with a young Indian girl. This novel is a prelude to the Battle of Little Big Horn.