Gertrude, Edward, and his younger sister Trudy go about their everyday chores, but news arrives that the French-Indian forces have been attacking and burning nearby settlements and that Teunis and his militia company have been sent to intercept them.

Later that day, while she and the children are out herding the cows, Gertrude spots a column of smoke in the distance and realizes that raiders are getting closer.

Barely able to outrun them, she reaches the front porch and manages to shout a pre-arranged warning to Edward, but is wounded in the shoulder by a thrown tomahawk, and the boy fires the gun through the front window, killing three raiders and driving off the remaining two (one of them, apparently wounded, is later killed by the returning militia).

Edward goes back into the burning house to save the Spanish gun, and later he, Trudy and their mother are found by their father and the other militiamen.

[3] The book has been accused of depicting Native Americans as "horror, the ultimate nightmare [...which] may very well be one of the worst descriptions of Native people in children’s literature, certainly in the 20th century", and "eulogiz[ing] an American past in which the indigenous populations were regarded as sub-human, and every effort made to exterminate them.