Jim Craig is eighteen-years-old, and cannot return to his mountain home until he has proven himself a man. Jessica Harrison is the beautiful, impetuous daughter of the wealthy cattleman whose £1000 colt runs off to join the brumby mob. And then there is the stallion, leader of the brumbies for almost twenty years, ranging free and proud in the mountains, whose very existence is like a dark thread running through the lives of so many people...