Richard is ready to come home from Princeton and expects his cousin,Larry, to be there to start his collage years. He expects to travel back to the west coast with whoever escorts Larry to Maryland. Larry doesn't want to go to collage, but his mother is adamant that he will go. Mother nature intervenes in the form of an angry mother bear protecting her cubs and Larry doesn't go east at all. That means Richard has to travel back to the Willamette Valley by himself. He walks a ways in his stocking feet, but travels the rest of the way with a wagon train where he meets both Sam and Chester Thomas. Alice is growing up enough to be given the responsibility of keeping her little sister, Linda, out of trouble. Linda and her cousin, Pearl, set a house on fire. Pearl runs away and meets a panther and Eli Thomas. Linda feels her punishment is unjust; after all, she didn't mean to set the house on fire. Meanwhile, Chester Thomas is planning revenge again, but this time his target isn't Dianna.