After a card game Southerner Owen Pentecost finds himself the owner of a Denver hotel. Involved with two women - one who came with the hotel, and one newly arrived from the East to open a dress shop - he then has to make even more fundamental choices when, with the start of the Civil War, he becomes one of a small minority in a strongly Unionist town.

Bandits ambush Capt. Roy Dexter of the U.S. Cavalry while he and his men escort a fortune in Confederate gold coins. Only Dexter survives the attack. He's subsequently sentenced to life in prison on the false belief he masterminded the ambush. Escaping from prison, Dexter sets about tracking down and exposing the true culprits.