When a mysterious, pursued drifter named Tellico rides into the isolated Sierra Mountains town of Jerusalem Camp, he soon finds himself snowed in by a fierce winter storm in a town where an unknown killer has begun stalking the populace for reasons no one seems to know. Killing with a long knife and leaving his victims marked by the severing of one thumb, the unseen murderer soon begins leaving hints that his actions may not be as random as they appear ... As he is drawn into the effort to find and stop the "Gray Man" who terrorizes the town, the stranger Tellico joins with the local blacksmith-turned-reluctant-town-marshal in trying to determine why death has descended upon Jerusalem Camp, and just what, and whose, long-buried sin it is that the Gray Man is determined to avenge.