In early 1900, a young cowboy from Alberta's Chief Mountain country joins the Canadian Mounted Rifles and sets out to defend British Empire interests in South Africa. On the march into the rebel republics, Frank Adams crosses the Great Karoo Desert. As the Canadian horse soldiers are made to pay for their own ignorance and the callous indifference of those who have sent them, their ideas of bravery and loyalty are reduced to their most raw, honest, and dangerous forms. The war introduces them to selves they did not know they contained.