As his first case after law school, Andrew Coyle is hired to defend a rancher accused of murdering a miner. Public opinion and all the circumstantial evidence are against his client and the tenderfoot lawyer. He decides that he must find the real killer in order to prove his client’s innocence. That task gets Coyle shot at, nearly burnt up in a cabin fire, and beat up in a barroom brawl. Along the way, he meets the haberdasher’s daughter, and a rocky romance ensues.

Seeing that he is losing the case in the courtroom, Coyle turns to a desperate inspiration that is his only chance: using technology that is new in the 1890s. Will his scheme be enough to save his client from hanging?