Thirteen-year-old Everett stares at the white-washed gallows emblazoned against an orange sunset as his father, found guilty of murder, plunges through the trap door. Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves takes the now-orphaned boy to Fort Gibson where he becomes a stable hand until early manhood.

Believing his father innocent and Wiley Stuart guilty, Everett hunts down the outlaw, but Deputy Marshal Ben Williams wrests away the prisoner and denies Everett all hope of clearing his father. Frustrated, Everett then drifts up the Chisholm Trail to Caldwell, Kansas, hires on at the Homestead Ranch, and meets Tabitha, the rancher's daughter. Soon, they make plans to marry. But in a poker-game dispute, Everett kills Brett and Jesse Harrison, sons of a powerful rancher. With Tabitha's promise to wait for him, Everett flees to Indian Territory.

Harrison's men doggedly pursue him into New Mexico where he joins a band of horse thieves, led by Vicente Silva, guarding a stolen herd in Horsethief Meadow, hidden away in a mountain valley. But a gunfight with his outlaw boss, Bandanna, sends him on the run again. Finding refuge with a miner in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains west of Cimarron, Everett soon has gold money in his pocket and Tabitha on his mind. He heads back to Caldwell where a cowhand convinces him that she has gone East and married a banker.

Bitterly disappointed, Everett turns westward, not sure where he will go or what he will do.