Who, or what, is senselessly slaughtering cattle on the high desert range?
Jeff Dawson is a young Associated Press writer intent on discovering what has caused the livestock mutilations in remote Haines County on the northern edge of the West’s Great Basin in the year 1973. Along with a mysterious independent agent named Dred Sol, Dawson observed several incidents of livestock lying dead in different locations of the twelve-thousand-square-mile county. Someone, or something, had neatly opened each animal’s midsection in a surgical manner and removed various sexual organs and other hide and tissue samples from the carcasses. Leaving no trace of blood, waste, signs of struggle, human, animal, or vehicle tracks. Dawson aims to report his observations and, hopefully, discover the answers to this inexplicable mystery. During his investigation Dawson encounters the Jame family, one of several ranching outfits that lost livestock to the unknown force, whose mysterious abilities help guide Dawson through his pursuits; a civilian employee from Washington D. C., dispatched to the radar base at Juniper, the Haines County seat, for reasons unrevealed; the attractive and witty school teacher who has lit a fire in Dawson’s heart; the school superintendent whose powerful personality seeks to force a consensus about the cattle deaths on the locals; a community newspaper publisher reluctant to print anything about the mutilations; the settlement of a bizarre commune of young dropouts in the nearby desert, whose presence arouses suspicions among the citizenry; and most of all, Dred Sol, the force driving the effort in pursuit of the mutilation culprit.
