Silver bullets, bears, blizzards, and buffalo occupy the Harris family as they settle into their new life on the Middle Fork of the Little Red River. Add Big Sam Meeker to the mix and things really start to happen, like bear wrestling to the death, a Cherokee wedding, a battle with thieves at Half Moon Mountain, and a fight with white renegades over silver bullets. Jerry Harris visits White Wolf and Morning Starr on Swan Creek and gets a new name from an Osage seer. His rescue of a captive Kaw slave in a spring blizzard causes a stir in the Osage camp and earns deadly enemies for Jerry. His fight in the wilderness of the Ozark hills with two Osage warriors leaves him seriously wounded and the slave girl Kansas as his only hope for survival. Kansas searches for her family among the Kaw tribe, then she and Sly Fox capture and tame a herd of wild horses after surviving a raid by Pawnee warriors. Those young boys Jesse Meeker and Riley Fourkiller learn the hard way that fishing and wine don't mix well and it is left up to Grandmother Laughing Brook to save them from a terrible fate.