He wants to get away from it all. Despite a satisfying career as chief curator of a museum devoted to the vanished American past, he finds he himself wants to vanish. So with the help of a book on the life and culture of a vanished tribe of Indians known as Bluff-dwellers, he takes up residence in the wilderness of the Ozark mountains, with only a dog for company and only an atlatl - a primitive spear thrower - to provide him with his supper. His few amusements are the playing of tunes on a hair-comb-and-tissue and writing what he intends to be an indictment of modern civilization in his journals. He makes the acquaintance of a young moon shiner who keeps him supplied abundantly with corn liquor. But after six years of this life he realizes that what he is trying to get away from is himself.Two women try to save him from drinking himself to death: an elderly widow who was once the postmistress of the abandoned town down in the valley, and a lovely but mysterious redhead who may or may not be the incarnation of the mistress of the fabled man who had founded the town ages ago.