Jagged lightning of a gathering thunderstorm. Buzzards circle over smoldering debris of a wagon train massacre. Two people are left alive. One, a Cheyenne warrior, fallen unconscious under his dying pony. The Indian drags himself free. Reviving from her faint into a living nightmare is The Woman. He starts to knife her. Then, a huge bird hovers above. To him, a great sign, the spirit of the storm come to spare her life. The morning light assuages her fears. He has not hurt her. A fire kept her warm and he has made a clumsy attempt to feed her. He can't comprehend her words. She draws stick figures in the dirt to express her need to reach a settlement of her own kind. Thus begins an arduous trek across brutal terrain. Fighting off and killing a Crow war party, the Indian gains a horse and a rifle. Enduring winter's freeze and a bear attack, they survive. Their bond of respect and trust becomes love. Before it can be consummated, five white mountain men, led by Buford, appear, offering the Woman safe conduct. They let the Indian go. In a poignant parting, he gives her his amulet, a talisman, to protect her. But, that night, fired by liquor and lust, the trappers gamble for first to have her. When the elder Isaac tries to stop them, he is shot dead. The four take their turns ravaging the Woman. Concerned for her, the Indian rides back the next day to find the Woman left staked out, limbs apart, shocked out of her senses. Leaving the catatonic girl in the care of two old Shoshone squaws, the Indian tracks the men, one by one. His savage brand of vengeance: insidious devices of torture and slow death.