When desperate ex-Confederate officer Zac Hunter rides into Nacogdoches, he has his mind set on bank robbery. What he finds when he walks into the bank is a robbery already in progress and town marshal Dan McCrae dying from gunshot wounds. Hunter is accused of murder by councillor Morgan Jarrow, then abruptly offered the job of town marshal. He is forced to serve notice on businessmen drilling for oil on the Skillern tract, crosses swords with lawyer Tyne Coburn and the two gunslingers Yantze and Levin, and must decide if Deputy Quint's strange confession is the truth. As the various factions in Nacogdoches struggle for supremacy, Hunter is drawn into a vicious cycle of treachery and murder. The showdown would come in a blazing gunfight on the Skillern tract.