Businessmen Edward Chambers and Rolo Mackenzie have settled in the mining town of Peralta, with the aim of buying up abandoned gold mines to search instead for silver. When the Goss brothers and their bullying father begin to cause trouble, Rolo and Edward decide that it's time Peralta had a sheriff and appoint hired gun Ben Dickson as the town's marshal. When the Goss boys steal some silver ore and flee to the town of Fool's Gold, Dickson proves himself ruthless in tracking them down. But the brothers are desperate men, and Dickson knows that a desperate man is a dangerous man. And he reckons without the vengefulness of the boys' father, Vernal Goss, who is hell-bent on a showdown.