Samuel Moore and his daughter Hannah set out for the border country with a party led by George Rogers Clark but left to follow the Kentucky River to Boone's Fort. As the story opens, Hannah is nursing her father, injured when an axe slips and cuts his leg. By the time Tice Fowler, on his way to Logan's Fort, stumbles upon them alone in the wilderness, Samuel is dying from blood poisoning. When Samuel dies, Tice takes Hannah to the fort, where women...

Set against a background of the Osage-Cherokee wars this is the story of Johnny Fowler...[who] runs a trading post and feels a sympathetic understanding for the Osage. His love for a young teacher is jeopardized when he avenges a Cherokee attack on an Osage village, determined to wipe out a force which has inflicted unspeakable violence on the Indians he knows and appreciates.

The dangerous journey by mule wagon train across the plains from Arkansas Territory in the spring of 1823 tests the marriage of "Johnny Osage" and Judith, his young wife and gentle New England girl.