It is 1873. Under a full moon, two Assiniboine Indians rustle twenty horses from a group of sleeping white men, wolf hunters taking in their pelts to trade. This sets the scene for two parallel narratives: the story of a young drifter known simply as 'the Englishman's boy', who joins the wolf hunters on their way north into Canada to hunt the horse thieves to ground; and the story of Shorty McAdoo, an old-time Western actor in 1920s Hollywood, who becomes the quarry of Damon Ira Chance, an enigmatic studio head, determined to realise his grand ambition to make 'the' big film about the American West.
