Jess is riding shotgun with a $30,000 Army payroll on a stage with three passengers using a special route. It is still held up as he learns the driver tipped off the robbers who decide to leave them all stranded in the desert.
Old memories surface when the officer in charge of Jess' POW camp turns up as the new deputy in Laramie. He tries to overcome the issue until other POWs arrive with revenge on their mind resulting in Slim and Jess against each other.
Jess and Sheriff Cory find two of the three men who held up the Laramie bank and shot Mike. Before he dies one tells them they may find the third man Mitch in Chloride. Jess must go alone but the reception in Chloride is icy at best.
Jess surprises everyone when he shoots a marshal in Laramie after knocking out Slim. On the lam he runs into a man who saw the shooting. Seeing an able but desperate Jess, the man offers him a job in a private army on the border.
Jess, injured by a falling tree in a dust storm, is nursed back to health by Sharon, daughter of a rancher plagued by rustlers. Sharon remains sympathetic to Jess even when the leader of the rustlers proves to be one of Jess's old friends.
When Jess' horse is stolen, he tracks it and the thief, a young Mexican boy, to a town. The sheriff arrests the boy and Jess is forced to stay to testify only to learn the Judge is vindictive due to the murder of his son by a Mexican.
Jess is critically wounded when he rides to warn Marshal McGary who is transporting a prisoner to hang that his brother plans to attack the tumbleweed wagon. The only close doctor is in the gang's hangout, Ironwood, where there is no law.
Jess as acting deputy frees a bounty hunter's prisoner who had cut down Jess during a lynching five years earlier saving his life. Having paid his debt, he decides to see if the prisoner was truly innocent himself or should be recaptured.
Jess's friend John MacLean is being chased by a posse for the murder of the sheriff and another man. They try to lynch him but Slim and Jess force a trial but the court is illegal. When John is lynched by them, Jess wants justice.
After one man is killed and Slim is wounded, Jess goes after the shooter who was riding a pinto. He loses the trail but rides to Rimrock where he finds the pinto. He confronts the owner who happens to be the sheriff of Rimrock.