In 1841, a St. Louis businessman had a dream: to open up the far reaches of the Yellowstone River and commerce with native tribes. So Guy Strauss put together a team of adventurers led by a half-civilized mountain man named Broken Leg Fitzhugh. The plan was to set up a trading post on the edge of a land he knew. Yet from the very beginning, the expedition was buffeted by disaster, plunging the men of the Rocky Mountain Trading Company into a desperate battle for survival. Out in the harsh wilderness, Fitzhugh's party had no allies - not the treacherous river or explosive storms, not the competing traders whose savage acts of sabotage almost destroyed them, and not the Cheyenne natives who came as friends by day - and as murderous enemies by night. But in a brutal winter of suffering, horror, and courage, nothing was as deadly as a single man with a rifle in his hand-and a burning desire in his heartto kill Broken Leg Fitzhugh.