When Dale McAfee, foreman of John Rockland's mighty Texas Star Ranch, killed a range rider working for Clell Durham, a free-grazing cowman, at the Union Eagle Saloon in Perdition Wells, Texas, the bullet went through his body and also killed an aged swamper. Several eyewitnesses told Sheriff Doyle Bannion that the old man had ignored warning calls and continued sweeping, so he ruled the involuntary shooting death by misadventure. Now, two months later, four horsemen ride into Perdition Wells during a Santa Ana dust storm and demand the sheriff tell them the name of the man who killed their father. The old swamper, their father, was Colonel Alpheus King, who had been the leader of a guerilla group known as King's Confederate Raiders during the Civil War. Because there was still a price on his head, he had sought refuge and anonymity in Perdition Wells. Now the four sons are there to avenge his death, not caring that it had been an accident. Bannion knows he cannot reveal McAfee's name to the King brothers, but they vow to discover the name. When they do, it will lead to a violent storm.