Six emotionally disturbed teenaged boys are sent from their homes throughout the United States by their affluent parents to Box Canyon Boys Camp near Prescott, Arizona, as the camp's slogan was "Send us a boy – we'll send you a cowboy", and the parents hoped that the camp would mature the boys. Each having originally been assigned to one of the six cabins, they are quickly outcast by the other campers, and find themselves together in one cabin. After a contest between the six cabins sorts out the pecking order, their cabin naturally lands in last place. The boys, in accordance with the camp rules, do manage to raid all of the superior cabins and conquer the trophies of the higher-ranking cabins to advance in rank, but they use badly executed subterfuge that is looked down upon by the other campers. Five of the six cabins were named after various Native American tribes and awarded mounted animal heads corresponding to each of the cabins' ranks, which are, from highest to lowest ranks:
All of the Bedwetters refer to each other by last names in the book and movie, including the two Lally brothers, who are referred to as Lally 1 and Lally 2, although their first names are mentioned in the book. An unpleasant confrontation between the boys and their counselor, resulting from an attempted molestation by the counselor to the youngest of the boys, ends with Teft breaking into their counselor's footlocker, and because of the whiskey, beer, cigarettes, and pornography found in the footlocker, they blackmail the counselor, who is called "Wheaties", into taking them to a ranch where they witness a canned hunt of surplus bison that had been rounded up from the surrounding area. The hunters sat or stood along a fence, while shooting at the fenced-in, nearly tame bison. When the boys return, disgusted at the slaughter, they decide to break out of camp that night to stop the canned hunt. They ride horses into town, where Teft hot-wires an old truck. After a ride into Flagstaff, Arizona, on U.S. Route 66, they enter an all-night eatery to get food, but are accosted by two "redneck" types, who follow the boys away from the restaurant and force them over, where they discover that the truck is hot-wired. Teft pulls a.22-caliber rifle from the back of the truck and shoots out a tire on the car driven by the men harassing the boys, then orders the men to start walking or they can "wear earrings". Cotton and the other boys climb back into the truck and continue their journey to the ranch, but run out of gas just before reaching their destination. They walk the rest of the way and make their way through the fence maze on the ranch until they get the exit gate open, so the bison can escape. However, the bison are content and have no intention of escaping, until Teft hot-wires a state-owned truck and Cotton drives into the herd of buffalo while blowing the truck's horn, which alerts the hunters who are camped out nearby. Cotton drives the truck through the herd of buffalo and over the edge of the Mogollon Rim to his death, which ends the book as the hunters surround the other boys.
