"The first men and women to reach the rugged mountains of the American West came in the early 1800's -- a handful of trappers, fur traders and mountain men. This novel tells the story of some of them -- of Maria de Vizes, fearless young beauty who survived ravishment and torture to become the first woman trader on that wild frontier -- of the handsome Kruger brothers, locked in a life-and-death struggle for possession of Maria -- of reckless young Barry Fitzpatrick, nephew of the legendary "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick, who risks everything at the savage battle of Pierre's Hole to save Maria from the Indians, led by the white renegade to whom she is the supreme prize."--Page 4 of cover.