War is raging, and the Union is going broke. President Lincoln knows there's enough gold in the west to finance the war, but he needs a wagon road to bring it home to the treasury. The chosen route passes through hunting grounds defended by the Northern Sioux and their allies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Will this effort to save the Union result in another war out west?

Azariah Martin will help decide that question. But he doesn't know it yet.

The bitter divisions of the war have torn young Azariah's family apart. When he leaves the family farm in Pilot Knob, Missouri to mend his relationship with his brother, a Confederate soldier, Azariah embarks on an adventure that lands him in two armies, a prison, a Shoshone tribe, a den of British spies, and ultimately the White House.