A nation is staggering to its feet after the long, devastating Civil War. The West is full of dreamers, wanderers, fighters and builders. One man has a plan to build a railroad-that plunges him into a brutal battle for survival. IN A LAND OF BEAUTY AND DEATH. In the high Rocky Mountains, Civil War veteran Marshall Brewster has a vision of wealth and fame. Under the tutelage of a hardened railroad tycoon, Brewster will build a railroad connecting Colorado's booming silver mines to a country starved for wealth-and maybe win himself the hand of a beautiful woman in the process. But as in war, Brewster's plan is soon shattered by the enemy: an angry, proud and desperate tribe of Cheyene warriors, a competing railroad baron and the ruthless, murderous hired guns at his beck and call. On a landscape of towering mountains, driving snow and clear rushing streams, the blood of fighters and innocents is being shed. And for a man who thought he already had his fill of war, another is just beginning-with no retreat, no surrender, and even bloodier than the battle he left behind.