Taylor Robin Morrissey, at fourteen years of age, has his safe middle class home broken up when his father goes to prison and his mother drifts into alcoholism. His only relative is his grandfather who is a small rancher in Wyoming, but who is estranged from Taylor's family. Taylor decides to hitchhike to his grandfather's to try to put a family back together. On the way, he is sexually attacked by a trucker, escapes to hide with a farm widow who protects him from a theft charge by the trucker. After other adventures he reaches his grandfather's ranch only to find him in the hospital, not expected to live. His Arapaho foreman tells him the ranch is in foreclosure with no way to pay the mortgages. He learns from his grandfather that the ranch has been left to Taylor in his will. Taylor has to save the ranch from the creditors and learn the business of ranching. He gets help from his foreman and learns from a professor at the University that his family has a long relationship with the Arapaho Tribe, dating back to the early days of the West. While visiting at the University to get help with his ranch he meets an Arapaho girl, a student there. They fall in love despite his mother's concern. This adventure novel explores the changing relations between the Native American tribes in the West and the dominant Anglo society in the personal terms of a young man and a young woman coming together.