The great Northwest-land of the Nez Perce, Yakama, Nisqually and Muckleshoot peoples and a land that beckoned settlers and the remnants from the gold fields. But it had been ravaged by the Indian wars of 1855 and the years following.

The Civil War was over, though not all was forgotten nor forgiven. Renegades were committed to making their mark against the Union. It was into this conflict that Elijah McCain's search for his missing sons brought him.

That hunt would take him into the scablands, across the desolate plains, to join a freighter wagon train to cross the Cascade Mountain Range by way of the Naches Trail, the most treacherous and deadly route known at the time-made more so by an attack on a wagon train, leaving a massacre in the wake. The same renegades set their sights on a gold-carrying wagon train, but they had not reckoned on a man like former Union Colonel Elijah McCain, and that was to be their mistake, or perhaps Elijah's.