When Deputy Brent Saunders agreed to meet Mariah Wingate at the train station, he never dreamed that he would watch the girl he wanted to marry step off the train. Cautioned to move slowly in courting his nine-year-old orphaned niece's new governess, he drives her out into the country to look at the section of land he purchased to start a small horse ranch in partnership with a friend. Brent unintentionally puts her life in danger as his relationship with Mariah places her in the path of cattle thieves and a rapist who has terrorized the county for several months.