Corporal Burke Langdon thought he was escaping from the doldrums of frontier Army life when he was assigned to take six strange-looking speckled Nez Perce Indian horses from Fort Boise to Fort Walla Walla. Langdon's dreams of rest and relaxation evaporate when he finds himself in the middle of a deadly conflict between a wagon train party and a Snake Indian war party led by a renegade Army deserter.