1865, the war is over. Lincoln is dead. The newly reformed nation is an open wound. Men and women desperate for a new life head West to find work on the most significant engineering achievement of 19th century America: the Transcontinental Railroad. A Southerner, Cullen Bohannon, seeks revenge for the rape and murder of his wife at the hands of Union soldiers. Elam Jefferson, a recently freed slave, desperately fights for respect in a country that has shown him none. A Cheyenne tribe strategizes and brutally attacks the newly arrived white men, hell-bent on destroying their newly laid tracks and “iron horse”. This railroad will get built…but at what cost?