The story opens with a scene of the Great American desert. There has been a drought. A group of Indians are seen gloomily looking at the dead and dying cows. A scout, foreseeing that they will soon be desperate warns the commander of the fort to be on his guard: hut he makes light of it. The colonel’s wife is in delicate health caused by brooding over her child’s death. She pleads with him to adopt a baby, and he gently, but firmly, refuses. Mrs. Bruce sees the happy wife of the sergeant, frolicking with her small children, and she risks the colonel’s displeasure by calling at the sergeant’s house. Her reason is being threatened and she becomes sick. The Indians decide to attack the settlement to obtain food, and hold a war dance and light fires, with the smoke of which they signal to their brothers who arrive in great numbers. They swoop down upon the cabins of the immigrants, killing the owners and sacking the houses. In one place a woman had placed her child in a crib on the shady side of the house, and it was overlooked. The scout again gallops swiftly to the fort and upbraids the colonel for his failure to take precautions. The troops hasten to the scene of conflict. A terrible struggle takes place with the maddened redskins, who are driven off after heavy losses in killed and wounded. The baby is found and taken back to the fort, when in a pathetic scene, is the means of helping the colonel’s wife back to health.