How it goes is the wagon train comes down with a fever and they�re running low on quinine. A young (about 5) girl�s older (about 10) brother and father take off with some other men to ride 2 days out to get more medicine from the next town. Shortly after they leave, the wagon train is attacked by renegades, made up of both post-civil war soldiers and bad Indians. They rape and pillage most all the women (and even a few children�second story) except the ones with fever. They don�t even bother killing any of them on purpose, just harming them enough that they will die without help. The girl escapes because her mother (who died) hid her. About 2 days later, a group of good Indians comes across the wreckage and saves those who they can, which basically consists of the young girl and a couple of other children. They stay clear of the ones infected with fever because they had already suffered devastating losses from other �white man� diseases. The boy, father, and rest of the people come back and have to clean up the mess. Everyone believes the children who have gone missing wandered off and are dead.
Flash forward to a few years later. The girl has been living with the Indians and has become one of them. She is in love with a young half-breed brave and he (possibly) with her. When he turns 18, he leaves for a year to live with the white man since that is part of his heritage. He fits in pretty well since he has blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, although he does have dark skin. Every white man tells him he �looks like an Injun with his long hair and he�d better cut it if he doesn�t want to be mistaken for one.� He doesn�t cut it because long hair is a sign of bravery among his people. Or something. The whole time he is gone, all he can think about is the girl.
Finally he comes home and before anyone knows he is back, he seeks her out. He finds her and confesses his love for her and she confesses her love for him. They marry in the ways of the Indian tribe and they have a daughter a couple years later. Now, it�s been about 15 years since the massacre and the good ole government decrees that all white women living with the Indians must be given back. I think there is a stipulation or something that says if a white woman moved in with the Indians in adulthood, she gets to stay. Not sure. I�ll have to look up the true historical decree or make something up.
The girl doesn�t think she has to go and the brave finds out the night before that she does, because if she doesn�t, the army will massacre the whole tribe. That night, he cuts off a lock of her hair and a lock of his and makes two bracelets out of it. He kisses the pulse in her wrist and ties it on. She does the same. Like wedding bands, get it? The next day, everyone is gathered around, watching the few white women being gathered up by the army. She takes her daughter and bids farewell to her husband. He promises to come for her. But wait! More tragedy is in store for her. They won�t let her take her 10-month-old daughter. An army man tears her daughter from her arms. So now there is a lot of wailing and such. On the trip back to the white world, she finds out that her older brother and father survived the massacre and she is going to live with them. Blah, blah, blah.
Her father remarried a few years after the massacre and is married to an awful controlling bitch who has an awful controlling daughter from her first marriage. Her poor father has been whipped good and bends to the wicked witch�s every will. The girl has to learn to get along with her new/old family.
Then one day, while she�s in the mercantile, who should enter but her brave and her daughter. He has dressed as a white man and even cut his hair! He bids her to meet with him that night and of course she does. Throughout the next few days, he buys up a plot of land and begins �settling� in the town. The townspeople think he�s a widower trying to start over. The girl and Brave continue to meet secretly until one night, as she�s sneaking back into her room, her brother catches her by waiting up for her. During this time, she and her brother have grown close and she has told him a lot about her life with the Indians. She lies to him and tells him that she is not used to being confined in a room and goes out at night to be �one with nature�. He knows she�s not telling the full truth, but he understands her distrust and promises to help cover for her.
The brave asks her father if he might court her and her father thinks that Brave is not good enough for his daughter and tells this to her while they�re eating dinner one night. She and her father get into an altercation and she runs from the dinner table. The wicked stepmother says that she needs a firm hand and she is the one to do it. The father agrees. The brother then sticks up for both her and the brave and gets yelled at, too. He leaves the room and joins up with his sister in her room. They do some more bonding and his sister confides in him about the bracelet and her daughter and all that good stuff. The brother assumes that the reason she is drawn to the widower is because of the daughter she lost and the daughter the widower has. The brother decides to fight for her against his father.