During the 1930s, Mrs. Winstanley boards college students to make a living while her husband is out of work. She and Mrs. Ewing and the other women who run boarding houses constantly gossip about the students, indulging in conversations about who got what grades and who is in what fraternity or sorority. Kitty Winstanley, at eighteen-years-old, also goes to college, but she cannot afford to be in a sorority and must pay her way through. She works at Caribou Ranch in the Rocky Mountains, where she is up from dawn until sundown serving the middle age guests. Kitty overhears her mother speaking to Mrs. Ewing about how her job is basically a vacation because she gets to ride horses and go to dances. In reality, Kitty is allowed to ride one certain horse which is in bad shape and she shows the Easterners the steps to the dances at the events. Though the work at Caribou Ranch is difficult and grueling, with the ghost town surrounding the ranch and the long hours, she spends all year waiting to get away to the ranch. At home, when she helps her mother with the boarders, they all knew who she is and who her mother is, meaning she must respond to every boarder's request politely. But at the ranch, she has no friends or acquaintances and can thus be herself. The other workers do not know about college or care and thus cannot be snobby about what Kitty reads or the fact that she is not in a sorority. Kitty overhears the landladies gossip about alcoholism in the frat houses. She thinks about the fact that the landladies have no idea that the women who run the Caribou Ranch are heavy drinkers themselves. At the ranch, as Kitty lives through the Prohibition, she facilitates the bringing of booze into the ranch. This work as a middleman is what brings Kitty her most generous tips. Kitty does the math in her head and realizes that her time in the Rocky Mountains is less than 300 hours away.