"The Tick Rider" is a story of families, homelands, drugs, redemption, and the dividing Rio Grande. A Texas cowboy, charged with rounding up tick-carrying Mexican livestock, meets a ranchero's daughter. At the same time, two teenage boys, Miguel and Guillermo, yearning for opportunity, begin the dangerous trek toward America, and Alejandro, a young pilot for the cartel lands a load of cocaine in the mountains of Guatemala and finds fear. The cartel plans to establish a plaza on the river, but an assassination delays the plan. Their subsequent stories play out against the backdrop of the encroaching reach of the drug cartel, its bosses and pistoleros. All their lives become more dangerous as the cartel's grip tightens, culminating in an attempted escape as a pack-train of drugs crosses the Rio Grande in the moonlight.