There was beaver out there, beaver galore, and the prettiest pelts a man could hope to handle. Everybody talked beaver and going west. And the one memory of Joe Fowler's boyhood that was an unchanging, undeviating constant was the waiting till he was big enough and old enough to start. It was the beginning of a legend." — By 29 he was an old-timer among the Mountain Men-the full-blooded traders and trappers who dared the vast wilderness of the Rockies long before the settlers followed. Joe had come to find freedom in the perfect solitude of forests and rivers, to test himself against the hostile redskins and the savage forces of nature. But another test awaited Joe, the unexpected test of love-in the arms of a beautiful, courageous Indian woman.