To market, to market, to sell your best friend, then split up the money and do it again.

Quincy Drew and Jason O’Rourke, a pair of friends and con men—the former white, the latter a Northern-born free Black man— travel from town to town in the pre–Civil War American West. In their scam, Quincy sells Jason into slavery, frees him, and the two move on to the next town of suckers . . . until a con gone wrong leads Jason into real danger.