"Huerfano" the Spanish word for "orphan" is an appropriate name for the 300 foot high, conical-shape butte that stands like a lone sentinel in the arid scrubland on the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Visible for miles from any direction, it served as a landmark, signaling the route to life-giving rivers that flowed from the nearby Wet Mountains. Like the butte, Cate Daggett and his good friend Blacky Hobbs are "orphans." They are the remnants of a generation of mountain men who have outlived the glory days when beaver trapping was a way of living. They must now make their way in a world where the boarders of the United States have reached to the Reo Grande River and the Pacific Ocean. The west they once knew is beginning to fill with settlers, and the tensions of the recent Mexican-American War, along with the hostile Indians, make life tenuous, and every day could be their last. Follow Cate and Blacky, as they battle Jicarilla Apache and New Mexico renegades in their quest to carve out a new life foe themselves in New Mexico Territory in shadow of the Huerfano.