Discretion

Charles Wolfe Collins has been investigating various clandestine matters for influential Washington politicians since 1865, having been a confidential operative for General Grant during the War of the Rebellion. In late summer of 1879, he is sent upon a mission into Colorado to assess the disintegrating state of affairs between the mercenary ambitions of white men and the treaty prerogatives of Ute Indian peoples. Drawn into a quagmire of hired provocateurs, vitriolic newspaper propaganda, fraudulent government contractors, a delusionary Indian agent and the baffled frustration of irate Ute chiefs, Charles Collins is charged with preventing a violent collision between U.S. cavalry troops and Ute warriors dedicated to protecting their families. Formidable economic and political interests are determined to contrive a situation within which the Ute people may be decisively eliminated while Collins seeks to unravel the tangle of deception, ultimately placing his trust in a fierce and mercurial war chief. Racing against time, they endeavor to disrupt the predictable outcome of an impending catastrophe.

Five years after the momentous battle on the Little Big Horn, Charles Wolfe Collins, erstwhile Pinkerton operative, has been working as a payroll guard and manhunter, confronting violent criminals throughout the towns and countryside of Montana Territory. Unexpectedly hired as an agent of General Alfred Terry, Commander of the Department of Dakota, Collins and his guide embark upon a journey across the northern prairies and up into the North-West Territories of Canada, seeking a defiant Lakota chief. Mired in racial hostilities, military aggression and famine that will culminate in tragic loss and deplorable injustice, Collins must navigate a changing landscape, fraught with white settlers and soldiers who no longer tolerate any Indian not confined to a reservation.