Randall is having a bad day. His well has gone bad, and a gopher is digging him a new one. He has tripped and fallen into the trench the gopher cut clear across his lawn, spilling the berries he wanted to preserve, and breaking the jars he was going to preserve them in. And he's stained his fur. But things are only going to get worse. When he goes to the community well to get water, he discovers that his friend Harley, the hare priest who saved his life three years earlier, is missing, and there is blood in Harley's office.

When the sheriff's new inspector fails to take the case seriously, Randall and Harley's newly appointed champion, the stag Samuel, instead investigate Harley's abduction on their own. This leads them into Lakehurst's burgeoning problem with gangs of young creatures ready to go to war over parts of the Old Dock Quarter, the part of the city that Randall and Harley call home.