Adolf Nagel interrupts the rape of his sixteen year-old fiancé by killing the son of the most influential man in Hocking County, Ohio. Escaping certain death, Adolf and Oskar McGill, his childhood friend, flee westward. Only seventeen, they embark on a perilous journey - including not only nature, but scalp-minded Indians and blood-thirsty desperados. They are drawn to the Rocky Mountains and the wild herds of mustangs in the Wyoming Territory, joined by a giant of a man from Minnesota, and a scrap of a horse wrangler from Texas, to create a horse ranch in this untamed land. As pioneers settling this new frontier, they would lead generations of the Nagel family to achieve their dreams.