With marriage, graduation, and the real world looming on the horizon, fifth year senior Caleb Fuller reassembles the ol' team of misfits for one last epic run in Intramural football.
Hawken is a rugged drifter and loner who meets and comes to rescue a young Shawnee woman, named Spirit in 1840s Tennessee, whom he leaves after saving her from a rouge group of Shawnee Indians. After taking up residence with an old fur trapper and old friend named Jeb Kline, Hawken later meets Spirit again whom runs away from a local fur trader named Tackett, whom she is sold to. Soon, Hawken is up against Tackett and a posse of hired killers, as well as a greedy and racist land owner, named Hickman, who's long abused son Noel whom narrates the entire story, comes to his and Spirit's aid to help them survive.
When two young lovers are savagely beaten and tortured on a back country road in Texarkana, local police are baffled and must find "the Phantom Killer" before he can kill again.