Kirby Randolph was a tough mountain man. He had promised himself that he would get the wagon train to Santa Fe because Aurélie St. Clair was in one of the wagons. She was half Indian, the most beautiful and the toughest girl he had ever seen.

This is the story of men and women who kept the Santa Fe Trail open in the 1880s, from Westport, Kansas, to Santa Fe, New Mexico.