Twelve-year-old Gabriel is too young to join the fifth U.S. Colored Calvary of the Union Army, his father's regiment, as a soldier in the Civil War. He finds a job as personal groom to Champion, the unruly horse that belongs to Colonel Waite, the white commander. The Calvary receives orders to join white regiments in an attack on the Virginia salt works, so Gabriel gets ahold of a horse and a uniform and joins the troops. When his father...