Preacher shaves his beard and poses as a greedy bumpkin from Ohio in order to confront Shad Beaumont, who is using fear and violence to take over the Western fur trade with the assistance of an army of hired gunmen.

A young man in a virgin land, a sweeping saga alive with the courage, challenge, danger and adventure that was the American frontier. In 1825 the distant Rockies offered all the adventure and wealth a young man could want. The mad demand for beaver pelts spawned a booming fur trade that sent men to battle against the fury of nature, hostile Indian tribes, and even each other in an ordeal that only the strongest could survive. Zach Hannah was a mere...

In the spring of 1831 a young Pennsylvanian, Zenas Leonard, embarked from St. Louis in a company of seventy men who had formed an expedition for the purpose of trapping furs and trading with the Indians in the Rocky Mountains. After four years of wandering which took him to the then strange land of Spanish California, he returned to his parental home in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, in the autumn of 1835, where he was greeted by his relatives as one returned...

"Luke Ransom was just eighteen years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed one hundred enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River--the longest in North America--all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and hostile...

The story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s.