When a pioneer family moves west the mother misses home so much that she will not even name the new baby until her daughter thinks of just the right thing to cheer her up.

While Papa is off fighting on the Missouri border, Charlie is left in charge of the family in their remote cabin in Bleeding Kansas and so must keep everyone safe when a fierce prairie blizzard growls and rages outside their door.

Charlie Keller has trouble feeling at home after his abolitionist father, wanting to cast a vote for freedom, moves his family from Massachusetts to the Kansas Territory which is on the verge of deciding whether to enter the Union as a free or a slave state.