Sleeper is the ragged young drifter White Water dismisses as a harmless idler-until he captures a feared outlaw and reveals an uncanny command of the country's finest stallion. When the horse is sold into suspicious hands, Sleeper spends his hard-won reward trying to reclaim the animal that trusts him. His pursuit leads through dark ravines and dangerous watercourses to the trail of a newly escaped bandit. A sly peddler offers money for information, a rancher's daughter sees worth where others see only a vagrant, and powerful men begin moving against one another for buried cash. With only his endurance, his knife, and the stallion at his side, Sleeper becomes a lone force against a tightening web of greed and violence.