After losing his mother and father at the age of thirteen, the young Bart Carter finds himself alone in strange country on his way to Colorado. Not long into his trek, he comes across a drunk who uses a long leather whip on him. One lash cuts a gash from the boy's ear to his chin, marking him for life with a grotesque scar. Bart is dying of infection in his injuries when Liz Douglas, a girl his own age who was traveling in a wagon train with her parents,...