THE PREVIOUS TWO WINTERS HAD BEEN HELLACIOUS . . . THIS ONE WOULD BE SAVAGE

The third winter in the Rocky Mountains was not the charm for mountain man Hawley Cooper. What started out as a prime beaver trapping season turned forbidding as another winter beckoned and settled into the Absaroka Mountains.

A war party of Crows raided his camp and ran off with his wife, a Shoshoni named Black Moon Woman. Left without a horse, Cooper follows the Crows as best he can but soon realizes that with winter laying its frigid hand on the land, he would never catch the warriors on foot.

Refused help by the Shoshonis, he gets a horse and heads out alone into the heart of winter again, searching the Bighorn Mountains hoping to find the Crows, bent on rescuing his wife-or avenging her death.

Winter isn't forgiving, and neither is he...