Bank robbers run a roadblock, killing the Sheriff of a high country county and severely wounding a deputy, then disappear into the mountain snow. What begins in mid-January as a straightforward search for two crooks by late May becomes a tangle of people and motives as former Sheriff turned consultant to the State Bureau of Investigation C.W. Blakenship unravels a snarl of embezzlement, drugs and murder that climaxes with a forest fire and a dynamite-laden confrontation.