A gripping and startlingly frank novel of life on a cattle ranch set on the Colorado-Wyoming border during the 1890s. The principle characters are Kelsey Cameron, his wife, Prim Munro, the ranch foreman and the foreman's wife. The novel's high point centers on a storm-beaten cattle drive over a mountain barrier to get the cattle to feed and their survival which exposes the core relationships among the characters whom the reader has come to care about deeply.