Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police are united for the first time to investigate a series of random murders that also seem to suggest the involvement of skinwalkers, spirits of the dead that seek revenge on the living.

The year is 1971 on a remote outpost of the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Tribal Police is besieged by a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. The closer he digs to the truth, the more he exposes the wounds of his past. He is joined on this journey by his new deputy, Jim Chee. Chee, too, has old scores to settle from his youth on the reservation. Together, the two men battle the forces of evil, each other, and...

Navajo sleuths Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are hot on the trail of Butch Cassidy. A drunken Navajo shaman is holding the murder weapon near the scene of a cop killing, but Chee has a hunch he's innocent. Their legwork turns up a CIA spook, a giant coded message, and a century-old bank heist proving that Butch Cassidy didn't die like they say in the movies.

Author James Buckley Jr. explains how these twenty-nine brave and intelligent Navajo men developed their amazing code, recounts some of their riskiest missions, and discusses how the country treated them before, during, and after the war.