What is the price of possession when from a glance the possessed are pursued, no matter the length of the chase, whether days, weeks or years? Enter Billy, thirteen years old. It is 1826 on the great salt flats in a Utah yet to be. When the American West was not, for she is here before the great migrations, here before the west as known. Through a chance encounter she meets Dampier Mox, a fleeing missionary running from a murder committed in self-defense. The beast holding his bounty accepts no excuse, no reason or lenient measure. He's a horror known broadly as Threadbare. When the bountyman collides with Billy and her family his execration extends to them, pairing Billy and Mox for an eighteen-year stretch barren and devoid of peace.