A stranger named Dunbar comes to the town of Dry Camp and goes to work at Rich Stanton's ranch. Shortly after Dunbar's arrival, he helps find the body of an old man named Ross Guilford. The foreman, Paul Kelso, picks a fight with a ranch hand named Willard Brumley. Dunbar intervenes, and Kelso fires him. As Dunbar asks around, he learns from Jack Brumley, Willard's father, that Guilford knew something about Brumley's wife, Louise, a beautiful woman of color who disappeared twenty years earlier. Stanton hires a man named Holcomb, who pairs up with Kelso to provoke Willard into a fatal gunfight. Jane Lancaster, an old friend of Louise, tells Dunbar some revealing information. Then Jane turns up dead. After a showdown with Kelso and then with Holcomb, Dunbar fights Stanton and beats him to death. Workmen dig up the remains of Louise Brumley, evidence that Stanton had an illicit affair with Louise and killed her to keep her silent.