In the spring of 1870, Jefferson Pickett left south Texas with a herd of 2,500 longhorns, moving north over the Chisholm Trail for Abilene, Kansas. A boy and thirteen women rode with him. This is the story of their struggles, hardships, and heartbreaks doing the impossible under a long sky. As a captain in the Confederate Army, Pickett makes a promise to a dying colonel of the Union Army that puts him on a collision course with the colonel's widow, a desperate ranch owner about to lose everything. Pickett is thrown into a no-win situation with only women and a boy to fight rustlers, Indians, killers, and robbers.