Determined to become an author of western penny dreadful novels like her idol, Ned Buntline, a young San Francisco newspaper editor christens herself Valentine Lovelace (after a floozie acquaintance of her father's) and heads east for the Wild West. She finds it in spades in the Texas Big Bend when she is kidnapped from a mule train by Comanches and ends up the guest of a ruthless comanchero.