 Simon Steele and his friend, Buell Mace, leave home in central Nebraska at 19 years-of-age. Simon leaves because there’s no reason to stay and Buell because there’s every reason to run. They stop at a roadhouse outside Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. It's a rough place with few rules and even fewer consequences if you break one. Simon is hired to keep books and order supplies. Buell's attitude earns him a job as an enforcer.
For four years the two maturing young men experience both the good and the bad that frontier America offered right after the Civil War. At that time, the U.S. Army set the rules and dealt harshly with men who broke them. People sought simple pleasures wherever they could and Simon’s job was to provide those pleasures. Buell's job was to maintain some semblance of control using what he knew best; violence.
Clinging tenaciously to the morals of his parents, and to the memory of the woman who rejected him, Simon conflicts with the more pragmatic and volatile Buell. Buell, who has trusted only two others in his life, sees surviving as a matter of striking first. Many people help to guide their growth: an old frontiersman; wise to the world and respectful of other men, a Shoshoni Indian who remembers a place where dignity and freedom were simply facts of life, and a woman who cooks for the saloon who senses Simon's conflicts and tries to help.
The advice of caring people is not enough, and Simon's morals slowly degrade, until he's devastated when he kills a man he thought he knew and trusted. The ever-loyal Buell conspires with witnesses to take the blame for the killing and then heads north, one step ahead of the U.S. Army. Simon, taking the advice of the frontiersman and a crude map from the Shoshoni, heads west to make peace with his conscience.
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Laramie
