After a year of retirement at the end of the Civil War, George Armstrong Custer is summoned by General Sheridan and appointed to the cavalry to quell the Indians of the Southern plains territory. Success in this area leads Sheridan to have Custer subdue the Sioux and Cheyenne of the Northern plains. Custer carries on an extra-marital affair with a young Indian girl. This novel is a prelude to the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Yellow Bird--the son of General George Armstrong Custer and his Cheyenne lover--must survive as an outcast among the Cheyenne following his father's death at Little Big Horn in 1876.