The protagonist is an educated man and expert horse-breaker, who through an inner compulsion, lives a Jeckyll and Hyde existence, stealing horses in Western Queensland. He is soon caught by the police, and ends up in Boggo Road gaol, and then St. Helena prison, in Moreton Bay. On release, he returns to Western Queensland, and then Northern New South Wales, where he falls in with a hardened outlaw and horse thief.