Modern bounty hunter Lewis Gates is hired to track down three dangerous fugitives who have escaped into the Montana wilderness. When the fugitives are found murdered, Gates has a mystery on his hands. Accompanied by anthropologist Lillian Sloane, Gates ventures further into the mountains and discovers an isolated settlement inhabited by a Native American tribe thought to have been wiped out by white settlers a century earlier. The two gradually begin to gain acceptance within the tribe, but when Gates' vengeful ex father-in-law, Sheriff Deegan, leads a posse into the mountains, Gates and Sloane must prevent the tribe from being massacred a second time.