In the remote Bear Paw Mountains of north-central Montana, two missionaries have gone missing. Their only tracks: a distress letter written by their daughter, and rumors of a small band of Nez Perce still hiding in the mountains after the 1877 defeat of their people in the Battle of the Bear Paws. Deputy Marshal Pete Randers finds himself roped into the job of going after them. Taking with him a tenderfoot doctor's son barely saved from the hangman's noose, Pete journeys into the dangerous wilderness in search of the truth, the missionaries, and the last hope of a forgotten people.