-
Wyoming, 1887
The scorching summer of '86 has baked the prairies of the Great Plains, starving the stock of ill-equipped farmers and driving away native fauna. When one of the harshest winters in Western history hits the following January, it brings with it a brutal blizzard that covers the earth in 16 inches of snow and plunges the temperature to fifty below at times. Cattle and wildlife, weakened by the summer, are killed by the conditions, and the surrounding area is thrown into a famine. Farmers find themselves having to defend their surviving stock round the clock from desperate travelers, who would love nothing more than to steal their cattle and slaughter them just to stay alive. Game is scarce, and even the most seasoned trappers have difficulty finding enough to feed and clothe themselves. Those able to have vacated the area, but the chance to do so easily has passed.
Desperation for survival has never been more palpable. Travelers, farmers, mountain men, bounty hunters, gangsters, desperados— all are united by the carnal desire to stay alive, and it's precisely this instinct that draws them together. People that would otherwise avoid one another find themselves forced to set aside their differences and work together to either survive the winter or escape farther south.
