It's Montana's birth year, 1889, and the Blascomb boys and their father, Bill, are headed for Dillon for some Christmas shopping. As they ride up the Beaverhead River, though, they encounter the Thornton family, late of Texas, and facing a winter without. "They'll get by," Bill Blascomb thinks, but in the spring, they'll be gone. Young Caleb, though, has another idea, and his faith and his father's adherence to his frontier ideals might just be enough to see the Thorntons through. "Following yondering star," the Blascomb brothers and their dad do their best to see that young Sarah and her folks survive their first Montana winter.