Fighting to defend their hunting grounds, Lakota Chief Red Cloud's coalition drove the military forces out of modern-day Wyoming. In December 1866, Captain William Fetterman led eighty men into the army's worst defeat at the hands of the Indians until Custer's Last Stand. Despite the turmoil of Indian attacks at Fort Phil Kearny, a paymaster clerk and a young schoolteacher fall in love. Their future is torn asunder when the United States abandons the forts protecting the Bozeman Trail, closing the shortest route to Montana's goldfields. Red Cloud's War was the only war the American Indians won fighting the U.S. Army.-- Back cover.