This is a story of an itinerant worker as he wanders the plains picking apples, digging potatoes, harvesting corn and working in the oil fields; collecting many friends but some enemies also.
He finally finds a permanent job in the high country of Southern Colorado with a beautiful widow, Rachel, who is rich in cattle and short on cash and saves her from complete financial disaster. Earl finds himself falling in love with this lady twice his age but his dreams are interrupted by the arrival of lovely Sheila, Rachel’s daughter. Sheila, who has been away to college, is attracted to Earl but cannot break down the barrier of Earl’s sense of his social inferiority.
Earl is shot from ambush by an old enemy and that helps bring them closer together but Sheila returns to school after a bitter quarrel