"He said his name was John Rutledge, and it had all started out as a simple favor - the return of a body to the ranch where the dead man had once been employed. But the circumstances of the killing - a cold-blooded gun-down - and the ominous parting words of the dead man's buddy made Rutledge wonder if there were going to be more serious consequences to his good deed than he had bargained for. By the time he got to the ranch and found Hetty Judson...

Matt, a young ranchhand, is rescued from a band of angry Kiowa by Jake Hooker and his gang, but his plight isn't much improved, because they force him to become an accomplice to their murderous raids on westward-traveling pioneers.