Jesse Kingman, just thirteen, faces a long year of self-appraisal. His world is beginning to change. Up to this time, his world has been his parents' remote cattle ranch. It was a secure world where a boy kept busy and happy, caring for his pets and doing his share almost a man's share - of the ranch work. SO satisfying was this life that Jesse did not miss the companionship of others his own age.

Suddenly things start to change. It seems to Jesse the most incomprehensible change takes place in his father whom he comes to understand less and less. When his father, who has taught him than an animal is the sole responsibility of its owner, removes the horns of Trouble, Jesse's pet cow, without even warning him, and later Trouble is found dead, Jesse rebels. When both parents insist the time has come for him to go away to school, he decides his world has changed too much.

In the mountains, where he seeks refuge, Jesse finds a trapped, starving wolf cub, Waif. Determined to save her life, but needing help, he is forced to bring Waif home, only to come up against his father's deep-seated aversion to wolves, the cattle's deadly enemy. Disappointed and embittered, unwilling even to admit that Waif won't stay a helpless cub for ever, Jesse runs away again.