Joe Lane, radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that the manager of the studio, Arthur Phillips, has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine. Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison for a few years, and when he is released he visits his son, Little Pal, at school and is begged by him to run away together.
The plot concerns a war hero who returns home determined to give up his old ways as a crook. Bud Doyle (Milton Sills) is still being hounded by the cops, and both his wife (Marcia Nanon) and a former associate, a dishonest politician, want to do him in.
In 1876, an old man finds gold in the Sioux lands, provoking a gold and land rush from immigrants to Dakota. On the way to Custer, the lonely cowboy Dan O'Malley helps to fix the wheel of Mr. Carlton's wagon and flirts with his daughter Lee Carlton. Later, Lee and her father are attacked by horse thieves and Mr. Carlton is murdered; however, the outlaws "Bull" Stanley, Mike Cos...