In this breathtaking climax, Bass, the hardy survivor of a world now gone, prepares to fight his magnificent final battle. Fleeing the bloody aftermath of the Taos Rebellion, Titus Bass leads his family north, hoping to winter with the Crow people. But wagons filled with overland emigrants in search of new homes have already begun to trek across the vast untamed frontier. The wild and free world of the mountain men is quickly fading into the past. Even the famous Jim Bridger, whose trading post sits on the emigrants' Oregon Trail, must contend with arriving Mormons under Brigham Young, who view the region as their Promised Land to be cleansed of all nonbelievers. For Titus Bass, the journey north is sadly eventful. He must save an old friend from death and rescue his daughter Magpie from cutthroat traders. He must find a way to free a wagon train of innocents from its unscrupulous leader, his murderous assistant, and the band of violent toughs who enforce the leader's will. Most important of all, Bass must come to terms with his long-lost daughter Amanda, bound with her husband and children for a new home ... in a faraway land that Bass himself will never see. When Bass eventually arrives in the land of the Crow, he finds old friends -- and old ways -- dying out. Determined to live out his final years in peace, Bass soon comes to realize that even on the changing frontier, enemies lie in wait, old dangers lurk, and survival is never a certain thing. But still to come is the greatest lesson of all -- that dearer by far than his own life are the lives of his friends and loved ones.