Bill Longley arrives in a small Texas town with the intension of helping Les Torbit, an old army buddy, in his range war with Kyle Richards' outfit. Longley soon learns that Torbit is held for accidentally shooting Richards' teen-aged daughter, but a potential lynch mob is getting liquored up to hang the prisoner if the girl dies.
Professional gambler Jake Romer wins big in a poker game, taking thousands of dollars in IOUs from Jim Caldwell, an ex-lawman, who had planned to buy cattle for his ranch in Texas. Convinced he's been cheated, Caldwell and his men hold-up the Cattleman Association and take their money along with $100,000 belonging to other cattlemen that was stored in the safe. Although Bill Longley hates Romer and rode with Caldwell years ago, he agrees to join the posse to capture his old friend.
Hot-headed Johnny Kaler, embarrassed that he's been caught cheating at cards, provokes Bill Longley into a barroom brawl and is quickly thrashed. Later in the evening Johnny tries to kill Bill, but dies when an unknown assailant shoots him in the back from the shadows. Johnny's big brother Mike still blames Longley for the shooting and calls him out for a showdown.
Bill Longley meets an old, but beautiful, friend who currently owns the local saloon and is happy to renew her acquaintance. This angers the local land baron, who has a proprietary interest in the young lady, and he tries to goad his college-educated son into killing Longley to earn the first notch on his gun.
Orin and Ruth McKnight's May/December romance hits a rough spot when Bill Longley returns from a cattle drive with news that Orin's son from his first marriage died driving off rustlers. To make matters worse, Ruth's old beau has traveled all the way from Ohio to bring his former girlfriend home.
While sleeping by his campsite, Bill is startled by sounds of movement in the underbrush. He investigates and finds a young boy who is so frightened that he can't talk. On the road to town, Bill is confronted by two henchmen who try to force Bill to turn the boy over to them; in the ensuing gunfight, Bill kills one of the gunslingers. Bill learns that the lad's father had a gold mine and just struck it rich; he reasons that the miner had been killed by the henchmen and the only witness to the crime is the boy. Bill must find proof to link the town's criminal element ...
Bill Longley comes to the aid of Ramirez, a farmer who wants to plant peach trees when the local cattlemen object. The town's sheriff, one of Longley's non-commissioned officers during the Civil War, doesn't want any trouble, but is forced to take sides when a lynch mob threatens to hang the farmer.
The $8300 Bill Longley earned for driving a herd of cattle to Mesa isn't in his hands for thirty seconds before two gunmen rob take his money and the bank's assets as well, mortally wounding the bank president in the process. One robber is killed by Max Bowen almost immediately and Longley continues his pursuit of the remaining bandit into Mexico after the posse turns back. Nick Ahern, the man Longley has been trailing, convinces the Texan that he's not the murdering thief that hasn't been apprehended and Longley convinces him to return to Mesa to defend his reputation in the face of an angry lynch mob.
After Longley is forced to kill a barfly that tried to shoot him in the back, he learns a quirk in the Montana law code - any man who slays another in a fair fight is responsible for the care and feeding of the widow and children until she gets married. Longley's efforts to escape the snare all come to naught because the widow is in love with him and wants him for a husband until he resorts to reverse psychology.
While riding down a trail, Bill is accosted by a 'boy' who demands he help 'his' father, who has been shut in the stomach. Before the man dies, he asks Bill to take care of his daughter and Bill discovers that the mud-splattered youth who accosted him is really a pretty girl with her long tresses tucked under her cap. Before the man can be a buried, a posse rides into their camp and the express agent accuses the dead man of robbery, but none of the stolen money can be found in the dead man's saddlebags. Henrietta asks Bill to help her clear her father's name.
Bill has been hired to guide two Easterners who want to capture wild stallions to use as studs for breeding. Bill and the Dowds get off on the wrong foot when the husband becomes jealous of his old friendship with his wife. Dowd hires three gunslingers to fake a robbery so that he drive them off and look like a hero in his wife's eyes but the owlhoots plan to steal all of the Easterners money and kill Bill Longley in the bargain.
Bill Longley shares a stagecoach compartment with Jody Sammett and his pregnant wife Maria on their journey to meet Jody's father, Big Jim Sammett for Christmas. Jody dies helping to fight off bandits who try to rob their stagecoach and Maria's father-in-law refuses to take in his son's Mexican-American wife or allow anyone in town to help her even though she has started in labor. While Bill tries to convince the old man to change his mind, the unsuccessful bandits try to abduct the town's only doctor to operate on their seriously wounded companion.
After Longley rescues the wounded Reverend Kilgore from two would-be bushwhackers, he learns that the parson was heading for Phillipsburg, a town with a reputation for killing men of the cloth. Bill decides to pose as the minister to investigate, but without his holster at the minister's insistence. With only Kilgore's Bible for protection, Bill attempts to rally the townspeople against the town boss and his crooked judge.
Longley is hired to drive the first herd of cattle directly from the Texas Panhandle to Denver. When he arrives he discovers that the woman who hired him, Jenny Brewster aka The Duchess of Denver, was the daughter of a sharecropper who lived on his plantation before the Civil War and is none to happy when Bill doesn't recognize her immediately. The woman's current love interest is jealous of Longley, too. He precipitates a duel that Longley is sure to lose since it's as crooked as the roulette wheels in his casino.
A crooked sheriff and his henchmen are attempting to continue their reign of terror by running a crooked election. Longley persuades an alcoholic former Harvard law professor to stand-up to the old sheriff and then backs him when he must evict the gunsels from a ranch they're trespassing on.
Longley rescues the lone survivor of a murderous stagecoach robbery, but the man refuses to help him identify the three killers.
Longley and the town's newspaper editor come to the assistance of a Hungarian peddler when he is attacked by local toughs. When the editor is murdered by the same gunsels, the peddler must choose between helping the Texan bring the killers to justice or fleeing with his pregnant wife.
Longley attempts to escort Yancey Lewis, a bank robber sentenced to spend five years in prison in a distant town. Longley not only has to deal with a howling windstorm and an empty canteen, but the outlaw's gang and his pretty girlfriend who are all trying to rescue him - not so much out of loyalty, but Yancey's the only person who knows where the loot from the heist is hidden.
Longley's old friend, pretty ranch owner Martha Driscoll, negotiates a highly successful sale at the end of a cattle drive. Although her friends urge her to put her money in the bank until she's ready to board a train home, Martha refuses and ends up being robbed and murdered - but not before naming her killer - Clint Gleason, one of her trailhands. Longley tracks the killer to his hometown where his father is sheriff and learns that the lawman implicitly believes his son is innocent of whatever crimes others accuse him of - even killing women.
Bill Longley returns from a cattle drive and discovers an impostor has stolen his mail, destroyed a saloon and dallied with a pretty girl, causing his father to demand a shotgun wedding. The impostor, a criminal recently sprung from jail by a crooked gambler with a grudge against Longley, starts to have a change of heart when he discovers the respect and admiration others have for a man who stands up for the weak and has second thoughts about luring Longley into the trap the gambler has set for the Texan.
A sea captain returns home to take possession of the ranch his father left him. Blinded in an attack on his, the captain turns to Longley for help.
Longley has just ridden into the town of Yellow Jacket, when he sees a gunman unhitching a team of horses over the loud objections of a pretty woman. When Longley intervenes, he discovers the man is only carrying out an obscure town ordinance that forbids leaving a wagon on the street overnight - the fine being $50, payable to the town marshal. Longley learns that the marshal has been lining his pockets with fines for obscure town laws he enforces with vigor and determines to beat the man at his own game.
Wylie Ames, a big gruff widower, has been corresponding with a lonely woman whose personal ad he saw in an out-of town paper. However, she is coming to meet him and this creates a big problem. He asks his old army captain, Bill Longley, to meet her and break the news that Wylie is not the attractive gentleman she is expecting. Also a man Wylie knocked out in a barroom fight dies and the family wants revenge - Longley is in for even bigger problems.
A crooked gambler with a Kentucky-born thoroughbred prods a drunken rancher into betting his entire spread and all the money he has in the bank on a horse race. The gambler tries to incapacitate the rancher's entry in the race but fails; however, what his henchmen couldn't accomplish a rattlesnake bite could and the horse comes up lame racing to fetch the doctor. Longley agrees to allow his quarter-horse to enter the race instead.
Longley rides to the rescue when four gunmen bushwhack a man riding in a buggy. Longley takes the man to a nearby ranch house, but neither the owner or the town doctor wishes to assist the wounded man, a judge scheduled to preside over the trial of the local land baron. When Longley reports the shooting to the sheriff, the lawman can't find any evidence to support the Texan's version of events - or the judge himself for that matter.
Longley, trapped by a landslide, is rescued by Johnny Hinshaw who the Texan soon discovers is on the run from the law. Johnny's accused of shooting a man after a quarrel and since he's already served a jail term and has two brothers on the run from the law he seems like a reasonable suspect to the sheriff - the more so since Johnny's sweet on the lawman's beautiful sister.
Longley and Captain Acosta of the Mexican Rurales travel to San Thomas to bid on a shipment of rifles and ammunition being sold at auction. There efforts are in vain - to their surprise, they are outbid by a beautiful blonde woman. They learn that she's merely the front for a notorious gun runner who plans to sell the guns along the border where they'll soon fall into the hands of the Apaches. Longley and Acosta throw into together to prevent the gunrunners plans from coming to fruition.
Stopping by a remote cabin to water his horse, Longley stumbles across its dead owner, the recipient of two bullets in the back. The dead man's brothers don't believe Longley's story that he just killed a rattlesnake and are preparing to string him up when he's rescued by a stranger with a dislike for lynchings. Longley explains his story to the marshal, who rides out of town to find the rattler, but Longley soon discovers that just about half the town was related to the dead man - and many of them are stone cold killers themselves more interested in revenge than explanations.
Longley must help a parolee and his pretty daughter battle a family of outlaws who are trying to drive him off his ranch. Longley has a pair of unlikely allies - a young gunman dressed all in black and a half-crazed old woman who was long held as a prisoner by the Apaches.
After the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Longley and two his junior officers agree to reunion five years later. The trio rendezvous in Laramie, Wyoming where the sheriff suspects one of the ex-Confederates of stealing an army-payroll.
Longley chases after Clay Thompson, a ruthless bounty hunter who is pursuit of a man falsely accused of bank robbery. Thompson won't believe the Texan when he explains that the wanted posters are being retracted and arranges with a crooked deputy sheriff to ensure that Bill won't interfere with his deadly vocation.
When an outlaw gang shoots up a town and robs the bank, Bill joins the posse to track the owlhoots down. When the outlaws cross into Mexico, the sheriff and his men return home, but Bill crosses the border to avenge the deaths of a pretty mother and daughter who had only just arrived in the West.
An actor/cardsharp who cleaned out two men at poker is set up as the fall guy by a crooked express agent and his cohorts when Longley is ambushed and the payroll he is delivering stolen.
Though reluctant at first, Bill accepts the offer of his old friend Sheriff Ben Tildy to take the job as his deputy, even though several deputies have been killed over the past few years as two ruthless men have taken over the town, and the residents blame Tildy for the deputies' deaths
Bill takes the job of escorting a convicted killer to his hanging, knowing that the man's sons and gang members are in the area planning to free him.