Montana cattle-brand inspector Gabriel Du Pr is banging on the door of archeologist Aaron Morgenstern's apartment in the historic Baxter Hotel, the tallest building in Bozeman. The old man who opens the door asks Du Pr: "Are you the goddamned Red River Breed with the damn dinosaur tooth that fool Burdette called me about?" The growing legion of fans of Bowen's first four Du Pr books (most recently, 1997's Notches) will recognize the tone and the territory. After a serious earthquake shakes up the local topography, Du Pr, the part-Metis Indian who frequently serves as deputy to county sheriff Benny Klein, gets involved in a story of greed that links ancient Indian residents of Montana with a present-day Japanese consortium's plans to turn a bucolic spring into a commercial trout farm.