In 1874, James Nugent, a trapper and landowner, rode across a hill in the Estes Park region of Colorado Territory with a man named William Brown. As they approached the home of Griff Evans, the drunken and confused man unexpectedly fired upon them. Nugent would later die of his injuries, and Brown would subsequently disappear -- as would a manuscript Nugent was thought to have been working on at the time. A hundred years later, a Colorado college professor becomes interested in the manuscript, and in the mystery of Nugent's murder, and follows the trail to a cottage in Tobermory, Scotland.