A mute young man and a daughter of privilege meet under unusual circumstances. Their lives are buffered by the troubled Colorado mines as a strike threatens the area. The young woman makes a fatal choice, and because of her defection, the young man goes from his new family to become involved with the intricacies of fighting against the Colorado National Guard, thugs hired by mine owners, and the detective agency working against the strike.

A modern-day drifter and horse-trainer reconnects by mistake with those he once thought were his family. Circumstance keep him in their life while he chases down a valuable horse set loose in a pasture once part of a WWI soldier's dream. Families fight and argue, a wife makes a play for a boy from her past who is now grown into a tough and skilled cowboy. The veteran, known only by his family's misinformation about their own past, has created a ranch house of great value that is the focus of the cowboy's surprise inheritance even as he is estranged from those who raised him.

A failed government agent resigns and heads out cross-country on horseback, away from the world of spies and assassins to where he belongs, the western grass lands and family ranches. James Straw doesn't even own his name; it has been given to him by the unnamed agency. In the northeastern part of New Mexico, the drifting cowboy finds a place to hide in a brush-covered canyon and a old miner's cabin. Eventually Straw is driven out by hunger and the needs of his horses and finds himself in the middle of a growing fight over water rights and real estate expansion. Hired by a local small...

ABRUPT - the story of a young man give little chance of survival, and his determination to make the best of a lethal world.