Rendezvous: In the 1800s, Barnaby Skye, a British youth impressed in the Royal Navy, jumps ship in Oregon and heads east to attend Harvard. On the way, he runs into Indians who introduce him to the life of a trapper, he meets an Indian maiden and forgets Harvard.

Dark passage: It is 1831 and Barnaby Skye, a deserter from the British Royal Navy and now a seasoned trapper in the Rocky Mountains, accompanies his Crow wife, Mary Quill Woman--whom he calls "Victoria"--to her village on the Yellowstone River. Victoria--unhappy with her husband's drinking and his unwillingness to join her people's fight against their sworn enemies, the Blackfeet--succumbs to the entreaties of Jim Beckwourth, the much-honored and wealthy mulatto war chief of the Crow People. But when Victoria is abducted by the Bloods, the deadliest band of Blackfeet, Skye trails her across the border into Canada, where he is still wanted for deserting his ship at Fort Vancouver four years ago. But the Bloods are a deadly force, and Skye must face his fiercest battle ever to win her freedom and her heart.