Lew Carney, a loner who traverses the deserts between the Sierras and the Rockies, and makes his living sharking cards, is not superstitious. But when a wagon, pulled by eight silent men, appears out of the darkness near his campfire, then disappears into thin air by dawn, Carney fears he may be in the grip of the supernatural.

When he finds the body of a man shot in the back, Carney looks for answers in nearby Cayuse, a gold-rush town where everyone scoffs at his “tall tale”— everyone but a stunningly beautiful woman with a steady gaze and an unnameable fear in her eyes.