Trail Boss

With age comes wisdom as well as a longing to turn back the hands of time and change the past. Charlie Couter is an old man who, on what he considers his last cattle drive, shares the stories of his life with the young drovers in his charge, in the hopes that they will learn from the events that has nearly destroyed his life. He is a young man full of dreams and ambitions. All too soon, his dreams become nightmares when his beloved young wife dies in a prairie fire along with their daughter and unborn child. The only reminders that Charlie has of her are her journal and a steel and diamond belt buckle that she had made for him. Losing himself in booze, women and cattle driving, he is beaten and left for dead; his precious belt buckle stolen from him. Charlie's quest begins: to find that belt buckle at all costs! His mentor is a mountain man named Buckknife, who also is on an elusive quest, seeking gold from the Black Hills. Through Couter's stories, his drovers learn what it is like to feel emptiness, bitterness and loss as well as maintain hope that somehow, dreams can become reality. This quest takes Couter from the booming lumber town of Stillwater, Minnesota and the rugged St. Croix River Valley in the 1850's to Kansas and the Black Hills of Dakota Territory during a turbulent time when the government was rounding up the native Sioux and Wild Bill Hickok was a well known reason to visit the card tables!