The year is 1846, a time of great turmoil for America. Claire McFarlane is a young Englishwoman traveling in the United States with her fiance, Sir Edward Garr, a supposed big game hunter who is actually a spy for the British-owned Hudson Bay Company. Claire is an exceptional artist whose ambition is to paint portraits of Indian warriors of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains--but her dreams may be compromised by Sir Edward's irrational desire to stop American movement into the Great Northwest.
A young man named Quincannon carries his own dreams into the wilderness, that of reestablishing the American Fur Company along the western seaboard. His love for Claire and his bitter rivalry with Edward Garr forms the background for a harrowing journey across the mountains and deserts into the new land of promise at the end of the Oregon Trail.