Ryan thinks he is imagining the boy standing before him.  When he reaches out to touch the young Cheyenne, laying the palm of his hand on the boy's chest, he feels the strong thump of a heartbeat.   With this mystical encounter, twelve-year-old Ryan Tyler is sent on an impossible quest to return a rare artifact, part of a plains courting flute, to the wilderness of the Cheyenne boy's youth.  Ryan experiences Cheyenne rituals and faces trials that make him question his quest into the rugged, untamed, and unforgiving Wyoming mountains.