At Kinney Trading Post, John Chinaman gets accosted by a pair of bounty hunters when a good deed from his past returns to haunt him. But soon, all three of them have bigger troubles on their hands: the Yagger brothers have waylaid a would-be schoolmarm and her wagon driver in the woods. When the trunk they believed full of gold turns out to be full of books, Chinaman leaps in to save the schoolmarm's life. Their perilous escape through Paiute territory involves running rapids on a raft, dodging vengeful bandits, and hardest of all—learning to trust each other.