A decade has passed since Sam Morgan of Pennsylvania ran away from disappointments at home and joined the rough-and-tumble life of a mountain man in the Far West. In those ten years, Sam has made his mark as a trapper, fighter, and survivor. Sam has also endured tragedy: An explorative venture into California, five years past, ended when his Crow Indian wife, Meadowlark, died in childbirth. And now his lover, the widow Paloma Luna, owner of a wealthy rancho in Taos, is dying of cancer and setting out for Mexico City to pray at the shrine of the Virgin de Guadalupe. Distraught, Sam finds a mission for himself when he determines to find and rescue two Mexican girls, Lupe and Rosalita, who have been kidnapped from their village by Navajo raiders and spirited off into the New Mexico wilderness. The search for the captive girls takes him deep into Navajo, Ute, and Blackfeet Indian territory, to Bent's Fort in Colorado, near death at the hands of a companion, and finally to a surprise at the end of the trail involving the missing girls and a trapper called Pegleg Smith.