A young girl escapes after her sexually abusive stepfather kills his wife. She is saved by an almost mythical hero by the river but later turns on him when her stepfather and his brother falsely accuse him of the murder. Sentenced to prison, the hero is nearly hanged on the way by his accusers. Badly scarred, the man starts over under a new name in a nearby town. When his fortunes dim, he returns to the town that condemned him. With age, a scarred face and revenge in his now twisted soul, he begins killing those who wrongly accused him. The girl, now a woman, has become a soiled dove to survive. Her real mother, a brothel owner, slowly goes berserk from guilt and hatred of her rival sister. The girl is kidnapped by her stepfather who now desperately holds off the "hero" and mocks him to be a hero once again. He refuses. As the girl is about to be killed, her vision of a true hero seems to finally come true when one of her patrons comes riding through the flooding river and rescues her.