Kit Carson spends his teenage years in the Southwest, learning to hunt, trap, and scout. Along the way, he befriends other frontier legends like Jim Bridger, and he quickly earns a reputation for his steely nerves and fearlessness. When Carson nearly dies in a skirmish with Blackfeet warriors, his mind turns to marriage, and he begins to court a famous Arapaho beauty named Waa-Nibe. But the realities of mountain life intrude on Carson's marriage plans when a Canadian mountain man, known as the Bully of the Mountains, insults Waa-Nibe. An incensed Carson challenges the bully to a duel to the death, and a legend is born when the two men face each other on horseback in the heart of the wild frontier.
Joe Meek, a naive and inexperienced teenager, arrives on the frontier with no formal education. Eventually, he rises to become one of the most respected and beloved mountain men of the entire frontier era. Upon joining the trapping brigade of legendary trapper William Sublette, Meek quickly masters the crucial skills of life in the mountains, including trapping, hunting, and surviving battles with fearsome Native American tribes. His greatest challenge arises from a chance encounter with warriors of the Crow tribe, who take him captive while he's scouting for new trapping areas. Using wits and guile to deceive his captors, Meek lures them into a confrontation with the famous mountain man Jim Bridger, who must find a way to rescue Meek without igniting a bloody battle with the formidable Crow.
Though Andrew Henry is a successful businessman, he has little experience in the fur trade when he joins a trapping expedition headed into the uncharted distant West. His partner, a mercurial Spanish-American trader named Manuel Lisa, nearly starts a mutiny by antagonizing American trappers while favoring the more experienced Canadian rivermen. When Lisa suddenly departs the expedition, Henry takes charge and vows to find the lucrative beaver furs in a region called Three Forks, which is ruled by the fearsome Blackfeet tribe. Along the way, he enlists the help of famous mountain man John Colter, whose dire warnings about Three Forks cause deep unease among the men. Colter's fears come true when the Blackfeet strike again and again, killing some of the men and forcing the rest to take refuge in a hastily built fort. Before long, Henry must make an agonizing choice: break his word and abandon the trapping venture, or lead the remaining men deeper into darkness to complete his mission.
In 1811, Marie Dorion, a member of the Iowa people and mother of two boys, joins her husband on a harrowing overland expedition to establish a fur trading post in the Pacific Northwest. While her husband, Pierre, serves as the official translator of the undertaking, Marie soon proves to be his equal as they trade with Native Americans along the way. When their journey is bogged down by the poor decisions of the expedition's leader, who is more businessman than mountain man, the party nearly starves, and Marie is forced to bury her newborn third child in an unmarked grave. Though they eventually reach the safety of Fort Astoria, Marie's worst ordeal still lies ahead. While trapping in the mountains, her husband is killed in a Native American raid, and Marie struggles to survive the winter with her two sons in a hastily built shelter. When their meager supply of food is depleted, Marie sets out into a blizzard in a desperate attempt to find help, risking a lonely death to save her children's lives.
Despite a career that rivals any of the greatest mountain men of the frontier era, Joe Walker remains relatively unknown. Born of humble beginnings in Tennessee, young Walker's thirst for adventure leads him to join his cousin Sam Houston in the violent Creek War of 1813, but the horror he witnesses on the battlefield leaves him with a lifelong abhorrence of bloodshed. After the war, Walker's wanderlust takes him to distant New Mexico, where he helps pioneer what becomes the famous Santa Fe Trail. When he is hired by the mysterious Benjamin Bonneville to guide a trapping expedition into the Rocky Mountains, Walker leads the first wagon train to ever cross the Continental Divide. His greatest exploration is a grueling trek across the Great Basin Desert seeking an overland route to California, which leads to a frightening confrontation with the Paiute tribe and a battle he'll do anything to avoid.
As the fur trade era is ending, lifelong frontiersman Tom Fitzpatrick is forced to adapt. He breaks away from the mountains to join his friend and legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith, who is now trading goods along the Santa Fe Trail. After weeks on the trail, their wagon train runs dangerously low on water, and Smith disappears after setting out to find a new water source. Though a desperate search turns up no sign of Smith, Fitzpatrick stumbles upon an orphaned Arapaho boy whom he takes under his wing and names "Friday." When the caravan finally makes it to Santa Fe, Fitzpatrick learns that Smith has been killed by Comanche warriors, ending one of the most remarkable lives of the frontier age. Afterward, Fitzpatrick informally adopts Friday, sending him to receive a formal education in St. Louis, and eventually locates and reunites him with his Arapaho family. Years later, while Fitzpatrick is guiding settlers along the remote trails of the West, he again encounters his adopted son.
