In 1854 three girls are lost in tens of thousands of square miles in someone else's land, a land where the Teton Lakota, the Brule, the Oglala, the Hunkapapa, the Absaroka, and the Arapaho have lived forever. No one knows they are missing. They are followed by an eighteen year old kid, alone, who, if not dead himself, certainly under any circumstances is not prepared to track them through an inhospitable, unforgiving land where "the only good white man is a dead one." Three teenaged girls are forced to live among a "civilized" people where hanging the scalps of their enemies from the lodge poles of their dwelling is a badge of honor, an example of bravery, courage, and fierceness in battle. Seven people, consisting of three teenagers, three children, and one Lakota warrior live in a "large" tipi having the qualified living area of three hundred fourteen square feet: not all that large considering that in the present day a family of four lives in a reasonably large house with a living area of fourteen hundred square feet. The girls, ages fourteen, seventeen and eighteen, are the sole survivors of a massacre suffered by their parents in the Wind River Mountains, central Nebraska Territory. This is the story of their "escape," their growing up, making adult decisions, and surviving on the northern plains of what was Tom Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and what became the Nebraska Territory in 1854. They hope they are being sought by Hack, another teenager, who may not have been killed with their parents, but their hope isn't well supported. He, too, would be alone, if he survived, more alone than they. They at least have each other. He has no one. This is their story.
