"Michael and Michele Dunn, twelve-year-old twins, are wealthy orphans living with their socialite businesswoman aunt, Angela Dunn, in Chicago. Angela is too committed to running the family business to raise the twins and she makes arrangements with the Illinois Detective Agency to send them to California to live with distant relatives. The detective agency is run by the son of its founder, Frank Miller. On the journey, the twins overhear a plot by Miller to kidnap them and hold them for a very high ransom demand. At a water stop near Medicine Bow in Wyoming, the twins jump the train and run away into the night. After two days and nights of running, the twins are hungry, thirsty, and very frightened. In the middle of the night, they encounter a lone cowboy with a small herd. While he is asleep the twins steal food from his chuck wagon. A sudden, terrible storm strikes and the twins are wet and cold and Michele is hit with a fever. In the morning, Michael has no choice but to seek help from the cowboy"-