Mary Beth is the kind of woman who wishes she had a five-second delay on her mouth. The swath of verbal destruction she leaves is why she goes west to start over. But any resolve to hold her tongue is lost immediately when she meets Jacob, a Lakota cowboy who says next to nothing – especially about the black leather mask that covers half his face. Jacob’s silence is his armor in a white man’s world, but even that isn’t enough to protect him – or the mute girl he guards – from forces he can’t control. Fascinated by the masked cowboy and drawn to defend the girl, Mary Beth finds herself in the middle of a decades-old power struggle that only she could talk her way out of.