A nineteenth-century drifter returns from Japan to learn that his tuberculosis has left him “weeks, months, but not years.” He embarks on a philosophical inquiry of death as he journeys on the historic overland route from New York to the Rocky Mountains. A devilish samurai mask, a cursed revolver, and his Romantic Disease propel him on a Herculean adventure into the Wild West, where he hopes to find a way to control his fate.