A man can run only so far . . . so fast.

Jamison Jakes is a well meaning - but friendless - heavy drinking drifter who left his boyhood home in Kentucky in search of nothing; and found it at every turn. Now, at age 34, he is merely surviving and in desperate need of something to give his life purpose. After signing on as a wrangler in Dakota Territory and working a four-month cattle drive, he finds himself in Cheyenne, once again out of work. But it's in Cheyenne that, by chance, Jakes meets two people who will change his life forever: a brash, cocky illiterate teenage boy and a college teacher turned bounty hunter.