Daniel Wheeler, his sons, Robert and Jackson, together with distant cousin Clara seek their fortune in several railroad boomtowns, starting with North Platte, Nebraska. By May 1868, they are in Cheyenne. After the Transcontinental Railroad is completed, Robert and Clara decide to strike out on their own.

Robert Wheeler is operating a general store in Hillsgate, Dakota Territory, while Clara teaches the town's children. Their store prospers as a result of the Black Hills Gold Rush and the many who rush into the area to find gold. In October 1874, Robert agrees to take a prospector into the Black Hills for $10., but they are attacked by two bushwhackers and the prospector is killed. Robert, in turn, kills the two bushwhackers with his Sharps Buffalo Rifle. Clara buys a typewriter from a traveling salesman. Robert invests the profits from the store in about 100 Buffalo hides for $3. each, expecting to make a profit from the craze for buffalo bedspreads and overcoats, but finds that fashions have moved on and he can not sell them to Douglas Hillman (Judge Reinhold) for more than $1. each. Instead, he gives them to the needy Indians at a nearby reservation. While there, he meets Capt. Richard Henry Pratt.

We learn that Robert and Clara had a son, William Wheeler, who had died from a fever. They later have another son named Jedediah Wheeler.