The Cherokee Indians are driven into Army stockades before their 1838-39 removal to the West, but Hettie and Sky, 16-year-old Cherokee twins; manage to escape to a cave in the Smoky Mountains. Benjamin Stone, a young Army officer, loves Hettie but takes part in the Cherokee roundup anyway and then serves as a military escort on the tragic Trail of Tears west. Hettie's family, meanwhile, is barely surviving in the cave on old-fashioned Cherokee lore, and their grandmother's loathsome pot scrubbers.
Ben learns rudimentary medicine from a kindly old doctor on the Trail and does his best to alleviate the suffering around him. Following many hardships, including the death of his patient, Quatie Ross, and the adoption of Tuti, an orphaned Cherokee, Ben returns from the West to search for Hettie and ask for her forgiveness.