The Buckskin Girl — Gwen Moffat

A small wagon train - twenty-eight people, six of them children, and eleven wagons - set out more than 130 years ago on a journey covering half a continent to reach their promised land, California. Along the way, calamities of all kinds strike them: one of their party dies of cholera, another is killed by a wounded buffalo, a third is scalped by Indians. There are tensions and dissensions: murder for possession of a hoard of gold coins, and rivalry for young and attractive Helen Weir, who gradually emerges as the strongest and most self-reliant of them all.