A fourteen-year-old girl tries unsuccessfully to avoid the journey to the gold rush country her family plans to take. During the five-hour wagon trip from New York City to Philadelphia, she is irritated by the small size of that wagon that carries her family of six and the endless chatter of her siblings. When a widow joins the caravan, she invites the girl to ride with her. Thus begins a close friendship that involves the widow's story of love, inheritance and deception through a little known California ruling. The widow's murder changes the girl profoundly as she begins the search for the assassin.