High in the unforgiving wilderness, where law ends and survival is earned one hard choice at a time, the beaver trail remembers every man who has walked it—and every debt left unpaid. When Ephraim Pike is taken on as a junior trapper, he believes the mountains will offer him freedom and fortune. Instead, he is drawn into a brutal world where partnerships are fragile, greed is deadly, and the wilderness is as ruthless as the men who roam it. Saved from betrayal by the seasoned mountain man Jedediah Cross, Ephraim is forced to confront the truth of the frontier: there is no justice beyond what a man is willing to claim for himself.