Big John McTavish has been hunting and trading among the métis buffalo hunters of the Red River Valley for more than thirty years. He's a trusted member of the half-breed nation, and a leader of the mixed-bloods' twice-yearly buffalo hunts. But when he returns to the settlements in the autumn of 1832 with a mountain man he's rescued from a Chippewa war party, he has no way of knowing the chain of events the outsider is about to unleash on the unsuspecting hunters. Or the kind of destruction that will follow them onto the buffalo ranges that border the lonely Missouri River. Before the hunters return to their homes along the Red River, Big John will learn the macabre secret that has brought the trapper from the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains.