During the summer of 1880, amid the searing heat of the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas and northern Mexico, Chief Victorio led his band of Mescalero and Warm Springs Apaches in a last, desperate exodus from a disease-ridden, barren reservation. Raiding cattle and horses to survive, Victorio and his people eluded pursuers on both sides of the Rio Grande, as the US Army, the Texas Rangers, and the Mexican territorial militia combined forces to ferret out and eliminate the fugitive Apaches. Into the midst of the authentic historical backdrop of what became known as the Victorio War, author Don DeNevi places Shep, a black German shepherd rescued and loved by Joseph Andrews and William Wiswall, two adventurers from the Colorado mining country. Shep forms an inexplicable bond with the Apache chief that leads Wiswall and Andrews into an unexpected and uncomfortable role. The imagined events of Shep in the Victorio War follow immediately upon those portrayed in DeNevi's earlier novel, Faithful Shep: The Story of a Hero Dog and the Nine Texas Rangers Who Saved Him.