Plot
Distraught but skillful bounty hunter Lewis Gates (Tom Berenger) pursues three armed escaped convicts into Montana's Oxbow Quadrangle, followed by his faithful companion called Zip, an Australian cattle dog. All Gates finds is a few scraps of cloth, some blood, and an old-fashioned Indian arrow. He takes the arrow to anthropologist Lillian Sloane (Barbara Hershey) who identifies it as a replica of the arrows used by Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. Gates doesn't think it's a replica and, after some library research, develops a long list of people who have disappeared into the Oxbow and a story of a "wild child" captured in the woods in the early 20th century. Now he's convinced that the fugitives were killed by a tribe of Dog Soldiers, a hardy band of native Americans who had somehow escaped the 1864 Sand Creek massacre and survived for 128 years secluded in the Montana Wilderness.
Gates convinces Sloane to join him in a search for the band. Just as they are preparing to return empty handed, the Dogmen surprise them, take them prisoner, and lead them back to the band's encampment, where they must convince the reclusive band's elders that they intend no harm. An immediate "salvation of one vs. salvation of many" crisis situation gives them the opportunity to prove their honorable intentions but also threatens to attract the attention of the outside world.
Gates and Sloane soon realize they must protect the secret of the band's existence from the outside world, beginning with the local Sheriff Deegan (Kurtwood Smith) who is now leading a posse into the Oxbow in search of both the fugitive convicts and Gates.
Read more about this topic: Last Of The Dogmen
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