Wildon Boothe is as innocent as a newborn babe when he heads out to the Arizona frontier. The band-playing military pomp of West Point did nothing to prepare the young shavetail for the man-killing wasteland of Apache Mesa.  But if the Army sends him to Hell itself, young Lieutenant Boothe is willing to serve.

Captain Charles Riker has been ordered to march his company of social misfits and raw recruits deep into Sioux territory. It is a land of heat and blistering winds, where daydreaming can separate a man from his scalplock . Indian war parties soon spot the bluecoat interlopers and set upon them with savage, mass attacks. When Riker and his command turn back, they find their retreat to the main body of troops cut off by the avenging Sioux.

Second Lieutenant Brad Pepperdine, a recent graduate of West Point, is assigned to a regiment of African-American soldiers participating in a brutal war against the fierce Comanche Indians.

At war's end, Guy Dubose a former officer in the Confederate Army — owning no skill except soldiering — joins up with the U.S. Army, donning the same Yankee blue he'd been lining up in his rifle sights for the last four bloody years. Quartered with society's lowliest at Fort Alexander, Indian Territory, the unreconstructed Rebel finds himself in a whole other kind of shooting match .

It is the 1890s and the Indian Wars have come to an end.  Captain Mack Hawkins is ordered to take command of one of the first units of the recently organized U.S. Scouts.  For the first time in American military history, these tribesmen are being allowed to enlist as fully accepted soldiers in the United States Army.