"Tennessee" Matthews is a trader dealing in buffalo hides at his post situated on the North Platte River at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. There Jed Hawkins and his daughter Virginia are waiting for an escort for their wagon trail headed for California. "Widow" Melindy Spriggs is also with the train and has intentions of trapping Hawkins as her next husband, although his disposition to drink is very trying to her 'dry' ways. "Squaw" O'Hara, called such because he has a habit of taking up with Indian women (which may well be very politically incorrect now, but writer F. McGrew Willis did not name his villain such with an eye on the PC world of the future, and revisionist film history will not intrude here) is hired as the train's scout. O'Hara is one bad character indeed and his real vocation is misguiding wagon trains into traps so they can be looted.