Kit Butler and Lige Turner remember the days when they had been welcome at an Indian fire, squatting at a powwow and gorging on half-cooked buffalo hump. But times had changed. Too many whites were moving West and the Indians were embarked on an attempt to throw back the tide. With the fur trade gone, Kit and Lige find themselves guiding a wagon train of thirty wagons with one hundred sixty people only seventy-seven were men west from Independence, Missouri, to Fort Collins through hostile Indian country. The members of the wagon train felt all this talk about Indians was just a way to keep a firm control over them. After all, none of them had seen any sign of Indians. Only Kit and Lige were aware of the fact that they had been watched for several days."