Flint visits Eleanor Culhane, his former love interest who subsequently married a notorious gunman. Towns people avoid her. Believing her husband had been dead for years, Flint begins seeing her, when her husband returns. Flint realizes there is another side to Eleanor that he was unaware of as well.

After losing one of her children in an accident, a woman becomes bitterly resentful of the wagon train and plans to turn back east, while her husband wishes to continue west. Hale, in an effort to persuade her to continue, tells her the story of his own trip west with his family and the ensuing tragedy.