A man named Fate Shannon and his ten-year-old son Watt play the fiddle together in their cabin as his mother, Beulah, watches. Their music is unique in that it sounds like nature and emotion rather than lines from an orchestra. Watt wants to learn how to play the love song that Fate plays for Beulah, but both say he’s too young. That song was so powerful that a long time before, it won Beulah’s heart despite her engagement to a rich man named Tip. They ran away together, but Tip chased them down with a gun, swearing revenge. Fate disarmed him easily and since that day, Tip has promised vengeance. The two men often miss each other until one day when they both happen to be in town, and Tip gets his gun to shoot Fate. Fate argues his way out of the altercation, but after that his reputation goes downhill as Tip continues to badmouth him and claim he was a coward for not participating in the shootout. Men go as far as to say that he was having an affair with the creek itself. Fate’s family lives in poverty, but they’re still happy together. The night that Fate teaches Watt to play the fiddle, a group of men led by Tip decide to chase him out of town. They sneak up to Fate’s cabin with disguises and break in, grabbing Fate and dragging him outside despite his family’s protests. The men begin to whip him, and in order to distract his mother from the terrible sound, Watt plays his father’s fiddle to sound like a rushing creek. This terrifies the men so greatly that they run away, and Tip falls into the stream and drowns.