He was a greenhorn but didn't know it. When Bruce Cowan takes his family and flees Boston to homestead out west, he figured the journey to California to be long but safe. Their first day out reveals how wrong he is and the perilous dangers of the Santa Fe Trail. It would have been a massacre but for Trent and Pat MacLeod. Trent favors a Sharps .50 caliber buffalo rifle, while his younger brother Pat packs two Texas Navy Colts. They both prove deadly and a force to be reckoned with. The Cowans and the McLeod brothers forge a bond those first few days, sustained in part by Trent's attraction to the eighteen-year-old Becky Cowan. His overtures are not returned. The brothers join the Cowans on their hazardous journey west as they face harsh conditions, bandits, and Indian attacks. Will their oxen survive the trip? Will the man Bruce Cowan is fleeing catch up with them? Should they take the Cimarron Cutoff through the desert or stick with the Santa Fe Trail through the mountains? Even with the help of Trent and Pat, the Cowans are forced to learn quickly to survive the rigorous demands of the Wild West.