Catherine, a beautiful blond woman captured by and raised with renegade Indians, is brought to Colorado Springs by soldiers when her tribe, which includes her husband, is wiped out, leaving her the sole survivor. She initially earns the townsfolks' sympathy, then their contempt when she rejects their gestures of kindness, doesn't know the language, and falls down into an epileptic fit. Indeed, her Indian name was ""Shivering Deer"" thanks to her grand mal epileptic seizures.

Mike takes her in, but the only members of the family she trusts and feels comfortable with, especially with her faltering English, are Sully, then Brian. Brian, however, becomes decidedly less enamored of her when he accidentally glimpses Catherine kissing Sully. Later, when Brian confronts Sully, he doesn't understand Sully's distinction between ""being kissed"" and ""kissing someone,"" and troubled, tells Mike about it.

Meanwhile, Jake, in a conversation with Loren and Dorothy about what marauding Indians do to white