Grete Marratt, a rising young rancher, sat stone-faced and tight-lipped when the judge asked him why he had cold-bloodedly shot and killed Deputy U.S. Marshal Hugh Clagg. With nothing to say in his own defense, he was declared guilty of murder and was sent to Yuma for life. Somehow Marratt managed to escape, and four days later, stumbled into the town of Bella Loma. There he was mistaken for the scorned and long-departed Luke Usher, a man who had suddenly disappeared years before after his father was mysteriously murdered. Marratt wondered what had scared Usher away from his large inheritance, but he gladly stepped into the vanished man's boots.