Simon Steele and his friend, Buell Mace, leave home at nineteen, Simon because there's no reason to stay and Buell because there's every reason to run. At a roadhouse outside Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, where there are few rules and even fewer consequences if you break one, Simon finds work as the house's supply man and Buell as an enforcer. Hanging tenaciously to the morals of his parents, and to the memory of the woman who rejected him, Simon conflicts with the more pragmatic and volatile Buell and seeks advice and comfort from three people: an old prospector, a Shoshoni Indian, and a woman who cooks for the saloon. But it's not enough, and he succumbs to the climate of evil with an act of unprecedented violence.