The story of this novel unfolds in the isolated wooden houses of the Indians, in courtrooms and offices, on the prairie and in icy Alaska. At the ranch of the secret chief Joe Inya-he-yukan King and his wife Queenie Tashina, men, women, and youth gather, including Hugh Wasesha Mahan, a former student of a boarding school for Indian children, who returns to the reservation and becomes embroiled in the conflicts of the desperate and rebellious youth as an educator and teacher. The new superintendent Chester Carr, a racist and bureaucrat, dissolves the school ranch and drives the buffalo from the King Ranch. A white rancher, a staunch Indian hater, becomes neighbors with Joe and Queenie King. Joe King and his friends from the reservation and the Indian Brotherhood creatively resist. However, the conflicts threaten to become deadly.