Shortly after World War I, Ernest Burkhart, who served in France as a cook, comes to seek his fortune in Oklahoma, where there is a large reservation of Osage Indians. In those parts lives his uncle William Hale, who goes by the nickname King - he is a landowner, cattle rancher, friend of the Indians and a big man. The King convinces Ernest to ask Molly Kyle, a young woman from a wealthy Indian family, to marry him. The idea is that the family's land rights will eventually pass to Burkhart (read Hale), and all it takes is for Molly's mother, her sisters, and herself to die.
