Gabe Blackwater feels incompetent as a parent since his stepdaughter Alison outwits him again and again. When she chances to meet a young man, Bart Strong, at an inn as she is traveling with her stepfather, she talks him into rescuing her, since he has a spare horse with him. Gabe pursues the two but then feels responsible for the injuries Bart suffers in a fall. When both his mounts return home without him but with a girl, Bart's mother Diana searches for him. She tracks Bart to an inn. The shock of finding her first husband nursing her son there is only equaled by Gabe's stunning guess about Bart's birth and the discovery of his stepdaughter at Diana's home.